China Healing Home

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Setting Criteria
The setting/story needs to meet at least one of the two criteria below:
A. The landscape, or region should be visually stimulating in some way. B. The people and culture should be somewhat unfamiliar, or exotic, to the American audience; or an American story somewhat unfamiliar to the American audience.

China is one of the most beautiful and fascinating countries on earth. Its culture spans over 4000 years and its natural beauty can be breathtaking. In addition, the rural countryside of China is often like being back 150 years ago. The location we are proposing is a beautiful and mountainous province in China, with many famous temples and gardens. The actual physical setting that we are proposing is inside a six story orphanage facility. We would be renovating one of the floors into a specialized unit to care for vulnerable orphaned children born with cleft lip. We believe that Americans have a true heart for orphaned children and that they would love seeing a story dedicated to helping children who have no family of their own to care for them.

The Problem / Hook
The Problem must meet these requirements: A. That it be unique, something that surprises the audience. “I can’t believe that happens!” B. That it be something outside of the person or persons control. Whether societal or governmental, natural or man made, a solution to this problem must be out of their own personal or communal reach.

For unknown reasons, Asia has the highest incidence of babies being born with cleft lip in the world. Due to cultural beliefs and lack of knowledge and education about treatment of cleft lip and palate, in China thousands of children born each year with cleft are abandoned and end up in the orphanage system. LWB has been working with this population of children since 2003. During the last six years, it has become very clear that many cleft children in orphanages pass away due to an inability to feed, mainly caused by ineffective bottle propping and orphanages being short staffed. Children with cleft all over the world often struggle with feeding issues, as they are unable to suck properly due to the opening in their lip and palate. Hospitals in the US provide counseling and feeding services to new parents of children with cleft. Unfortunately, cleft-affected children in orphanages often do not get the one on one care that they need in order to slowly take in a bottle at every feeding, often with tragic results. We believe so strongly that no child should ever pass away simply from being born with cleft.

The Solution / Resolution
The solution or resolution of the problem must meet two requirements:
A. The aspect of the project should be directly applied to relieving the problem in a straightforward fashion. See problem/fix problem. B. Another, equally important, aspect of the project should be entirely for purposes of pure joy. It should engender excitement and anticipation in the community resulting in a near ecstatic response upon its unveiling.

We have personally seen hundreds of cleft babies struggle in an orphanage setting. We realized that by opening a home specifically for critically ill cleft children, staffed with well trained caregivers, we could save lives every day. Our first cleft healing home opened in Anhui province last year. It was the first of its kind in China, set up specifically to care for orphaned children with cleft. When LWB learns of a new baby with cleft in the orphanages we serve, we take the child from the institutional setting and care for them in our healing home. Here they are fed by hand with special cleft bottles by specially trained nannies. Many of the children we receive are failure to thrive infants. For example, we have had many children come to the home at 8-9 months of age weighing just 8-9 pounds. Working in partnership with local hospitals, we create a feeding plan for these malnourished infants. Children with cleft often suffer from other medical issues such as being prone to pneumonia. We provide all essential medical care to these more fragile infants. Once children reach the required weight, they receive surgery which allows them to feed better and be more accepted in society. Following surgery and recovery, we place the babies into loving foster homes and advocate for each child to find a permanent home through adoption.

Our desire is to open a healing home for children with cleft in every province in China. We propose an episode of Imagine This! to build another one of these life saving homes. With each cleft home that we open, 30 children a year can have their lives saved, have their cleft surgeries as quickly as possible, and then have the absolute best chance of finding a family through adoption. Every child born deserves to be loved, and opening a new cleft healing home will give some of the most vulnerable children in the world a chance to receive that gift.

We believe this project would bring great joy to the orphanage caregivers, as they want so desperately to be able to help the children in their care who are struggling. Our home could have beautiful murals on the walls, stimulating toys for the children to play with, and strollers available so that the caregivers can take the children out for walks. We could also build either a playroom or a playground for all of the other children at the orphanage to use as well, which would brighten their lives in a wonderful way.

The Celebration
The two peoples (team and community) come together, celebrating the projects completion. The celebration should fit with the cultural and physical surroundings. It should have the feel of a grand extravaganza worthy of capping off all that preceded it.

For the celebration, there could be two groups that could join our children in the grand opening of this new home. First, we could invite children throughout China that have been healed by LWB to join in the celebration of this new home. We heal over a 100 children a year with cleft in many different orphanages. Also, we could have some of the babies and nannies from our other two cleft homes joining the celebration. There is one particular young lady that we would love to have attend. We were honored to repair her cleft lip when she was 19 years old. Our foundation then ended up paying for her college tuition, and right now she is number one in her class for accounting. She has written us and told us how grateful she is to know people are helping other children with cleft in China because of what she experienced as a child with an unrepaired cleft. We would love to have her come for the grand opening! Another possibility would be to have a small cleft surgery mission planned for the opening ceremony time, so that children could receive surgery as well. We have an amazing cleft surgeon who has done many trips for LWB in the past, and he could work in the local hospital to provide free surgery for both orphaned and rural children. It is always very emotional for parents and caregivers to see their child’s face for the first time after his or her cleft lip is healed.