Brick 1 - A Garden within a Garden
MAKE A DIFFERENCE
TO 20 ABANDONED HANDICAPPED CHILDREN
To donate via bank transfer, you can find more information HERE
A Garden within a Garden is an project of the Sisters at Biancun Orphanage in Hebei China. It hopes to take care of the needs of 20 mentally incapacitated children. We estimate that it will take €280 (₤200 or $400) to give one child a place in the Garden within a Garden for one year. Your donation of whatever amount, will be gratefully accepted. Our promise is that 100% of your donation will go to “The Garden within a Garden” another Brick in China’s Great Wall of Charity
The Sisters at Biancun Orphanage, Hebei, China caters for more than 70 children with a whole range of handicap from mild to profound disability. The facilities are basic and the circumstances under which the Sisters work there complicated. Despite the difficulties, a year long association with Bricks the Great Wall Appeal has helped to look at ways forward and to identify the need of some particularly disadvantaged children in the home.
With seventy children to care for, it is often the most difficult and demanding who get all the attention. Some of the children have behavioral problems and the more active can require a lot of time and energy. However there are 20 children who are no trouble at all, because the severity of their disability is such that they are all bed-ridden, they cannot communicate and depend on others for every aspect of their lives. They live out their daily existence staring at the ceiling of the spartan room that is home. Beds designed for healthy adults are all that are available to them and without being able to be safely propped up they cannot even experience the ordinary movement of people around them. They are cared for, of course, but with 50 other children demanding to be heard, it is inevitable that the severely handicapped don’t get the time and attention they should.
The staff members are very loving but have had no access to professional training. They feed and wash the children, but know little of the therapies which would allow these special people to interact, even if only a little, with the environment around them. A simple example would be the importance of touch. When a person no other senses, they still can feel the warmth of another’s touch. Overworked staff attend to the children’s physical needs, but without training don’t always recognize the signs of emotional need of children who are unable to describe their experiences.
A Garden within a Garden identifies the 20 children who are severely mentally incapacitated. It also identifies the staff with primary responsibility for their care. In the course of the year, the Sisters will create within the orphanage a unit, a garden if you will, designed to care for their special needs. The unit will have equipment which will allow the children a better quality of life than they currently enjoy and a staff who have been introduced to current best practice in caring for those who cannot communicate their desire for emotional as well as physical support.
A Garden within a Garden will give an improved quality of life to 20 children with severe mental handicap. With your help we can make their garden a haven in a world that tells them they are useless and their existence a drain on resources. We believe differently, and by placing this brick in the Great Wall of Charity, we are insisting that every child, no matter how limited they may appear, is loved by God and should be allowed a foretaste of paradise in their own garden here on earth.
