{"id":863,"date":"2010-08-30T16:15:57","date_gmt":"2010-08-30T23:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/?p=863"},"modified":"2010-08-30T23:07:40","modified_gmt":"2010-08-31T06:07:40","slug":"walk-the-wall-to-child-abandonment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/?p=863","title":{"rendered":"Walk the Wall to End Child Abandonment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each year Steve & I\u00a0grow in our determination to partner with an amazing organization that is very close to our hearts, <\/span>International China Concern<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 We first learned about them one Sunday a number of years ago.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The thing that stood out to us was that <\/span>they were all about helping Chinese families stay united and therby reducing the astronomical abandonment rate in China<\/span>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Compound that with the fact that most families (yes, even with the growing\u00a0numbers of Chinese middle class and the country’s over all economic growth)\u00a0live well below the poverty line, even by Chinese standards.\u00a0 In a situation like that, parents sometimes find themselves faced with only one option\u00a0 in order to find medical care for their child – abandonment.\u00a0 The hope is that their child will be found and given the care that they need to survive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not a fathomable situation, that’s for sure.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u00a0their child.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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!)<\/em> and Hengyang walk a 10km walk in order to raise money for their projects in China.\u00a0 And ICC supporters around the world join\u00a0them in their walk all in their home cities.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 An ambitious goal!\u00a0<\/p>\n

I won’t be able to join the walk in body this year (yes, I’m s.t.i.l.l. on crutches!)<\/em>, so I thought I’d share it with my online friends instead.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Visit the Walk the Wall<\/span> <\/a>\u00a0site 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!)<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Each year Steve & I\u00a0grow in our determination to partner with an amazing organization that is very close to our hearts, International China Concern.\u00a0 We first learned about them one Sunday a number of years ago.\u00a0 We had been attending a Chinese Baptist church in the city we used to live in, and I remember […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[68],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=863"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":875,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions\/875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}