Coal for Kids
Winters in northern China are harsh and frigid. When you're an orphan in a rural, nongovernmental orphanage, the winters are even harsher. Babies may be swaddled, but they don’t move enough to keep themselves warm. Sometimes the windows are broken, letting cold air whip around the room. Coal, the only viable source of heat for these children living in unimaginable conditions, often runs out before the end of winter, and there’s just not enough heat to keep these children safe and healthy. Children can lose their fingers, toes, and feet to frostbite while inside, in their own beds.
The story of Daming Orphanage
Daming Orphanage was once just a convent for Chinese Catholic nuns. They lived a simple life focused on their local church and parishoners in the village.
One day a little girl with clubbed feet was left at the gate, and they took her in. They fell in love with her, and raised money locally to have her feet repaired surgically.
They decided that opening their doors to children would be
something they could do. Children continued to arrive over a period of time.
One winter when their coal supply was not sufficient, children were frostbitten during the night. The same little girl who had rallied the nuns and the local community to repair her clubbed feet had to have her feet amputated due to the frostbite she suffered.
Word of this story reached Beijing, and support groups like BICCO and OCDF stepped in to raise the funds needed to provide sufficient heating, and also to train the nuns on how to provide better winter care for the children (such as heating 16-24 hours a day versus 6-8 hours, putting drapes on windows, using sufficient bedding and blankets, buntings, etc.)
The Growth of Coal for Kids
Coal for Kids now provides for the heating needs at 5 nongovernmental orphanages (4 orphanagages in Hebei P
rovince and 1 orphanage in Shanxi Province), and we were recently asked to add a 6th orphanage to our funding priorities. In order to provide sufficient heating and other basic supplies for our current 5 orphanages, we need to raise $35,000 each year. This is an ongoing project for OCDF, and it is imperative that we meet this goal each year to ensure that the very most basic survival needs of these children are met.
Thank you for whatever support you, your family, your workplace, or your community can offer for this important, ongoing project! You really can help save children from losing limbs and life!
To donate to this project online, please go to OCDF's Orphan Support Donation page. You may also mail donations by check to:
OCDF
PO Box 1243
Bloomington, IL 61702-1243 USA
Please make checks payable to OCDF, and include "Coal for Kids" in the memo line. You may also donate by credit card by calling 309-829-8202 or 1-866-460-OCDF (toll-free in the US).
Our Chinese Daughters Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with offices in Bloomington, IL and Beijing. OCDF is committed to improving the lives of orphans living in China through a variety of programs that allow you to give to a specific orphanage, as well as support established projects designed especially to assist non-government sponsored orphanages, which depend upon private support from their local community and abroad. OCDF particularly seeks out orphanages that take in special needs children, or are located in remote areas of China, making it difficult for those institutions to obtain proper medical care or school supplies.
Updated 03.12.2010
