College Students Foster Love Through Mentorship of Adopted Chinese Children
WEST LOS ANGELES, Calif.-Long tables are cluttered with plain white t-shirts as the overwhelming fumes of bright permanent markers fill the air. Marker tops quickly pop off their caps from the nimble hands of elementary school children excited to begin creating imaginative illustrations on the shirt canvas.
But this is no ordinary playgroup in a typical classroom. Seated at these long tables are a handful of adopted children from China, with their China Care Bruins college buddies on the University of California, Los Angeles campus.
Each smiling young face has a different story and background. Each individual UCLA China Care mentor has a personal commitment. And together, both the children and their older buddies share in these experiences.
UCLA's China Care Bruins is an umbrella organization of the national China Care Foundation, a group founded seven years ago by then 16-year-old Matt Dalio. Dalio lived in China for a year and wanted to found an organization dedicated to improving the lives of Chinese orphans. The first China Care club was formed at Harvard University in 2003.
Program participants from 6-13 years old "see young people in leadership positions," and interact with college students on a big university campus to build "positive identity development," said Jeri Okamoto Floyd, an adoptive mother of two daughters.
China Care Clubs provide young students with the opportunity to involve themselves in multifaceted programs that support young adoptees and their families.
The mentorship programs are not only an important means of guidance for Chinese orphans, but they are also tools to help children in "recognizing role models" - in particular, Asian Pacific American role models.
There are currently 17 active college clubs across the nation, including one at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. China Care clubs have expanded to the elementary school level to provide mentorship programs for families of adopted children and financial support for medical surgeries in China's orphanages.
In the summer of 2004, Stephanie Lo went on an emotional trip to one of China's poorest provinces where she cared for many physically handicapped children.
"I can still smell the need, I can still hear the need," said Lo, 22, who is a fourth-year international development studies and public policy major at UCLA.
Sitting on rusted "potty chairs," physically handicapped Chinese youngsters struggling with ailing conditions such as spina bifida and cerebral palsy can be found at orphanages in the Hunan Province of China.
Most of these children are discovered abandoned in marketplaces, left by parents who could not afford to care for them. One child, an eight-year-old girl, was mute and unable to walk, said Lo.
It was that summer experience that inspired Lo, who is a first generation Chinese American, to turn her concern for improving the lives of Chinese orphans into action, by founding the first China Care club on the West Coast in 2005 at UCLA.
For Kevin Xu, current president of China Care at Brown University, being involved in this club is a personal responsibility.
The children that participate in the program are "coming to a world that's strange to them and they have never been there before," he said.
In its second year as a club, China Care Brown has raised over $90,000 from their annual benefit dinner in 2006. The money helped to sponsor needed medical surgeries for orphans and has helped place over 30 orphans with loving foster families in America. In 2005, four summer interns journeyed to the Weifang Orphanage and gave the facility a new dryer, diapers, and various materials that were in vital need, said Xu.
Whether it's organizing a fundraising marathon in Boston, teaching calligraphy at bimonthly mentorship playgroups in North Carolina, or traveling to China to intern at an orphanage, college students in China Care clubs attest their experiences are truly inspiring.
First-year college student and Duke University China Care club participant Jun Hu, 19, draws a connection with her involvement to her professional goals.
"My career goal is to become a pediatrician and I know that orphans will be the target group," said Hu.
Especially affected are the families who actually participate in the mentorship programs. UCLA's China Care club partners with the Families with Children from China (FCC) - Southern California Chapter to invite children to share in activities that teach them to appreciate their heritage and identity.
"It's very exciting that there are programs like this that involve young people ... its mission has so many facets including mentorship programs," said Floyd, who is also president of the Southern California FCC.
Floyd's 11-year-old daughter regularly tags along to almost all FCC meetings and her oldest daughter tells her the China Care mentorship program is her favorite activity.
"I want children in third-world countries to know that there are people around the world that think about them," said Lac Tran, publicity coordinator for China Care Bruins.
Tran said it's all about spreading compassion for those children whose "future is so undecided."
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