Each year Steve & I grow in our determination to partner with an amazing organization that is very close to our hearts, International China Concern. We first learned about them one Sunday a number of years ago. We had been attending a Chinese Baptist church in the city we used to live in, and I remember being so impressed by the calling that the young founder and his wife had to reach out to children in China. The thing that stood out to us was that they were all about helping Chinese families stay united and therby reducing the astronomical abandonment rate in China.
Abandonment of Chinese children happens for many, many reasons, but one of the significant ones is due to the fact that there is no system of socialized health care there. Compound that with the fact that most families (yes, even with the growing numbers of Chinese middle class and the country’s over all economic growth) live well below the poverty line, even by Chinese standards. In a situation like that, parents sometimes find themselves faced with only one option in order to find medical care for their child – abandonment. The hope is that their child will be found and given the care that they need to survive.
Not a fathomable situation, that’s for sure.
What Steve and I love about ICC is that fact that in addition to providing family-like care homes for children with extremely complex or life long disabilities, ICC also provides education, support and medical care to families who would have otherwise been forced into making a decision to consider abandonning their child.
Once a year, the children in their care in Changsha (the capital of Samuel’s home province of Hunan, where we will officially become his forever family!) and Hengyang walk a 10km walk in order to raise money for their projects in China. And ICC supporters around the world join them in their walk all in their home cities. The goal is to have enough supporters join them that they will be able to collectively walk the length of the Great Wall of China. An ambitious goal!
I won’t be able to join the walk in body this year (yes, I’m s.t.i.l.l. on crutches!), so I thought I’d share it with my online friends instead.
Visit the Walk the Wall site to see how you can sponsor one of these amazing kids on their walk and take a look at their video (lots of amazing kids!).
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