Building on Dreams
Building on Dreams is a project supporting Xuanhua orphanage, a volunteer-built orphanage in Hebei Province serving special-needs children. This orphanage is also one of 5 non-governmental orphanages sponsored by our Coal for Kids project. OCDF's support of this orphanage is ongoing, and this project has been one of OCDF's most special, due to the amazing personal story behind it.
The Building on Dreams Story
In Hebei Province, there is a family who had raised their three children: two daughters and one son. Their family home had been razed by the government, and they had been given a new plot of land on a road leading to the city, a nice corner lot with nice exposure. The family built a 4-room home for themselves, the father, a very capable man, doing most of the work himself.
Then one summer their son
was killed in an automobile accident, and they were devastated.
As members of a 100-year-old Catholic Church, they turned to the church
offering to help the church in their time of mourning. The church
asked the couple if they would take in 5 disabled children as
foster parents, and they agreed.
The couple soon came to
care deeply for the well-being of these five children. On their little plot
of land they grew vegetables, had a small barn with 5 cows for
milk, and they cared as best as they could for the kids as kind-hearted foster parents.
One day the husband decided he needed to do more, that he wanted to do more. So he started building an amazing addition onto their home. It was a large L-shape, with a dozen or more rooms:
bedrooms, kitchen, bathhouse, dining room, and space for a
restaurant in order to make money to support having more children in
their home. In essence, he was building their own orphanage, completely on his own!
The quality
of construction that this man was able to accomplish on this
landsite was a real feat: the hand-layed brick wall, the out
buildings, and the foundation of the addition itself, complete with finished
walls and windows. It was an amazing labor of
love for this man!
But tragedy struck again for this family when the father had a heart attack and died while working on his still unfinished orphanage.
Jane took a trip out to this family's home in 2006, and found everything sitting where it was when he last worked there - shovels, scaffolding, wood, sand. The foundation was done, the walls were done and windows installed, plaster was completed, floors were tiled. All hard work done by a man with a dream to help children.
She met a gracious and smiling lady in her early 50s, the foster mother to two of the five original children (three
were moved to a rural farm family in hopes they could be returned when the addition to the home was finished). When asked why the barn was empty, the woman explained that she had to sell the 5 cows to live on the money in order to
support the kids after her husband died. Jane saw the
photos of the woman's deceased son and husband, and heard how she hoped to dedicate the new wing
of her home to their memory.
On that cold winter day there was only heat from a
little pot belly stove in one room - her husband had not yet finished
the plumbing and heating system. The coal pile was so small
we almost didn’t see it. There was no boiler for heating, and no indoor plumbing. The outhouse
was impossible for her special needs children to reach on their own. The exterior property wall needed facing on
both sides with cement and then painted. The interior needed furniture, the walls lacked paint, and there were no drapes or curtains. The new addition still lacked electricity, and the coming spring was going to bring a whole new list of tasks to be completed: the garden to plant,
railings added for safety on the walkways, ramps for the
disabled, and the purchase of goats, rabbits, and chickens for food.
Describing her experience meeting this family and the foster kids, Jane wrote in 2006: "When we got back into the van we all just looked at each other. Whew! What a morning. The story of the father mourning his son, and the dedication of his wife to the project he left behind was weighing heavy on us...The needs and the to do list - long but not insurmountable. We felt like this was just the roll up your sleeves project we needed for the university and international school teachers/students who have been asking for volunteer opportunities without overwhelming established NGO facilities or government institutions with too many people at once. So we’re committed and in as they say!"
With volunteer help and donations, the Xuanhua orphanage was finally finished!
If you'd like to donate to this ongoing 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 "Building on Dreams" 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 Nov 2009
