Foster Care ~ Busy Changing Lives
by Arlene Howard
Director of Foster Care
LWB's Foster Care Program has had a busy start this year. We have had 17 children adopted and introduced 29 new children to our foster care programs.
We were delighted to hear earlier this year that Rachel, who has been in our Lu'An foster care program since 2005, is to be adopted. We have watched her over the years develop into such a sweet, kind, and gentle girl, and we wish her well with her new family. She will be greatly missed by all her friends still in our foster care program.
Following a visit to Guizhou Province in March by our Executive Director, Amy Eldridge, and Foster Care Program Director, Arlene Howard, we opened a new foster care program in Qiandongnan in Guizhou Province.
Guizhou, located in southwest China, is a region whose orphanages haven't received as much international assistance as some others. While being one of China's poorest provinces, Guizhou is definitely one of its most beautiful. It has one of the highest populations of ethnic minorities, including the Miao, Dong, Yi, and Bai people.
The Qiandongnan orphanage serves 17 counties and helps approximately 100 children each year, the vast majority entering the orphanage with medical needs. The director told us how much they like foster care as he shares our feeling that every child deserves to know the love of a family.
We started this new program with ten children. We have enjoyed receiving 
photos and reports of the children over the past few months and getting to know them and are very grateful to our supporters for making this program possible. The families and children were delighted to recently receive new baby walkers and clothes. We have now been asked to expand our program to take in eight to ten more children. The children are so tiny and sweet.
We have also been asked to add five children to our Zhaotong foster care program.
We look forward to adding these children to our program, allowing them to receive the love and care of foster families, but need to find sponsors to support their foster care placement. The first sponsor to sign up for any of these children will be given the opportunity to name the child (since we don't use their Chinese names in our reports, due to confidentiality).
If you are interested in sponsoring any of these children, please visit our foster care sponsorship page.
There are also children from our other foster care programs still requiring sponsorship featured on our sponsorship page.
We are in the early stages of opening a foster care program in Shanxi Province. We recently took some Shanxi orphaned children with cleft lip and palate needs into our Henan Cleft Healing Home. These children were very fragile but are thriving with the personal care and attention received in our healing homes. Around August, after they receive their cleft surgeries, we plan to place them with foster care families in their hometown. If you want to be first to sponsor one of these children, please contact our foster care team for further details.
In addition to providing a loving family environment, our foster care program is concerned with the children's physical well-being. Adequate nutrition is very important to a child's growth and development as necessary nut
rients provide the body immunity and the ability to repair itself. Good nutrition is also essential for a child's cognitive development.
Our foster care program has now started supplying boxes of quality cereal to foster care children under the age of 24 months to help ensure that they receive the best nutrition possible. The cereal is delivered monthly by our local foster care managers. We are looking for sponsors of this project. The cost of providing cereal to a child for one month is $15. We are glad to receive one-time or monthly donations. Sponsors will receive monthly reports and photos of the children helped.
Thank you to all our amazing foster care supporters who understand the importance of belonging and make it possible for our special children to have families of their very own!
g SWI have lots of new educational toys, PT equipment and five new walkers! Jeff and Lynn ran in the Illinois Marathon (their very first marathon) and wanted it to "count" toward something that was very special to their family. They decided they wanted to give something back to the children still waiting for their families in Zhejiang 
Province, their daughter's first home. Through their hard work, they crossed the finish line together and were able to raise $2,295 to bless some very special children. Thank you, Lynn and Jeff!
frequently asked is whether or not foster families can adopt the children in their care. The honest answer to that question is that it varies completely by individual city. China's domestic adoption program is increasing by leaps and bounds, and now in many major cities, infertile couples are on long waiting lists for non-special needs children. They often pay far more in domestic adoption fees than the current international ones. So the argument of ten years ago that the reason foster families didn't adopt was all because orphanages could "get more" if the child went overseas is definitely not true any longer. In fact, we are seeing more and more Chinese families travel to other provinces to adopt from more rural orphanages when they cannot adopt from the larger city facilities.