Taiyuan (CNS) -- About 20 children from the Taiyuan Welfare House spent a day playing at a water park, taking photographs and making handicrafts with volunteers from all over the world on August 17.
The summer camp was organized by the Bring Me Hope foundation. Its main concern is to "deliver love for Chinese orphans" through consultation services for American families intending to adopt orphans in China. It also finances and plans the summer camp, as well as provides financial aid to local orphanages in China.
Initiated in 2005, it has camped in Beijing, Jiangxi, Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Yunnan, Shandong and other regions.
Han Zong, a senior at the Guanghua Management School of Peking University and one of the Chinese volunteers, explained the function of the camp. "It is operated as a family unit, and the 'families' each have different colors. In the one-week period of the camp, two volunteers – one from China and one from abroad – live and play with the children using various themes such as oral English, social norms, physical exercise, music, painting and games."
As a member of this year's camp in Shanxi, Tim from the U.S. said, "We plant love in them, and then harvest love from them. I am glad to be their 'father' or 'brother,' a family member from the other side of the world."
Terry, from New Zealand, was happiest when the children called him brother. "They really treat me as their own brother. We have plenty of fun together. As the single child in my family, I now have sisters and brothers in Taiyuan, China!"
In one of the temporary "families," a foreign "mother" and 11-year-old Dang Yanli drew a picture together in an autograph book, in which a mother and daughter are playing on a swing.
Dang told CNS that her mother is so special that she has blue eyes and sings English songs, and her friends admire her.
"The children like their international families. The foreign volunteers are kind to them, as if they are real parents," according to the Chinese organizer.
