\"Auntie…" implored the little girl, hooking her finger into the pocket of Jian Chen’s blouse, “could you please help me go back home?”

Jian, the director of Holt International’s China Program, was visiting an institution in Jilin province when the little girl reached out to get her attention. Severe disabilities didn’t stop Meng You from gathering her hopes and finding a way to ask the stranger to help her return to the only family she had known.

“My heart was so moved,” says Jian. “How could I ever refuse such a plea?”

Soon all the children around Jian began to chime in: “When can we go home?” they questioned her. Jian asked the orphanage director what the children were talking about, and the woman explained that until recently these children had been in foster care. The economy in the area had become depressed, and many foster parents had lost their jobs. The families could no longer afford to take care of their children and reluctantly brought them to this converted homeless shelter, the orphanage director said. Jian looked around at the children’s faces and was moved by their hope.

In November 1999 Jian and other Holt staff visited two cities in China’s cold Jilin province. Earlier that year Holt had met with the Chinese central government’s Ministry of Civil Affairs. In previous consultation with the Chinese government, Holt already had initiated successful child welfare projects in several places in southern China, and one of the issues they discussed was how Holt could offer to help in some other perhaps less accessible places.

“We found that in the north part of China, they had very little contact with the outside world,” Jian says. “And they didn’t have international adoption whatsoever…. We wanted to go somewhere that had no outside agency to go in and help.”

Jian Chen with Meng You.

“She told me there was an orphanage in [Jilin province], and maybe we needed to help,” remembers Jian. “I asked her why, and she said, ‘Go there; you will see.’”

Accompanied by local government officials, Holt staff were taken to see a makeshift orphanage that was bursting at the seams from an influx of children. Crowded into only two bedrooms with bunk beds in a damp, barren brick building, the children begged to be returned to the only homes most had ever known.

Their foster families had received a monthly reimbursement for their expenses, and the children benefited from the stability, security, and loving care of a family environment. But despite the efforts of the local civil affairs office, a gradual rise in the cost of living meant the funds were no longer sufficient to cover foster care expenses. And since many of the children had special needs, the families had even more difficulty managing the costs.

In August 1999 when the government converted a local homeless shelter into a place for abandoned children, the foster parents reluctantly brought in the 56 children they had been caring for. Many of the foster parents, distraught over losing their children, would come to the orphanage daily to visit and then return home in tears. Local citizens donated basic clothing and goods to the institution, but nothing could replace the love of a family.

“They tried their best to provide a home for these children, but that’s not the home they wanted,” Jian remembers.

Seeing the children, Jian observed that they were alert, questioning, curious and outgoing—not like most children who have lived in an orphanage for an extended period of time. “It appeared to me that these kids did not belong here,” she said.

So early in 2000 Holt provided funds and management to help return the children to their foster homes and to begin a foster care program in another Jilin city. Holt’s site manager, Xiao Xiao, a resident of China’s warm sub-tropical southern province of Guangxi, braved the unaccustomed freezing winter temperatures of Jilin for over two months as she prepared the groundwork for a functioning foster care project.

Ron Waite with Meng You.

In the first program, Holt provided supplemental funds so that foster families could meet all the basic needs of their children. The children had been out of foster care for more than six months, and the parents were overjoyed to have them back in January right before the family-oriented Spring Festival. Even some children who had not had foster families prior to the reunification were now in loving homes, and the project has since expanded to include four children from another city who have severe special needs.

Nearly 200 miles west in another Jilin city, the local Social Welfare Institution was struggling with a similar kind of problem. There 30 abandoned or orphaned children filled the orphanage to capacity, and more children were being housed in nursing homes or hospitals scattered around the county. Although the director of the institution said he wished he could place children in foster care, the institution lacked the resources to do so.

This time Xiao Xiao identified new foster families and trained a new staff person, Sue Liu, who would oversee both Jilin projects. Sue Liu, who came recomended by the local Chinese government, had much-needed experience. The two worked quickly with the orphanage to bring 10 children, most of whom had special needs, into foster care.

In addition to providing the resources to make the two foster care projects possible, Holt also was able to assist the province in officially beginning to place needy children through international adoption. By Chinese law and local procedure, all funds that are collected by welfare institutions from international adoption fees must be used directly to support the children and the institution. So in Jilin province, this new source of revenue gradually will support the two blossoming foster care programs.

To date, several Jilin children have been placed through international adoption, the first of whom, Joli Puttmann, appears on the cover of this November/December issue of Hi Families with Xiao Xiao. In addition, nearly all of the children in the projects areas in Jilin are already in sponsorship. The donations help pay for much of the foster families’ expenses as well as additional medical care, which makes the foster care programs even more of a success. In addition, much of the work in Jilin was sponsored by grants from Families with Children from China (NY) and the Ralph and Eileen Swett Foundation.

In April 2000 Jian visited some of the children who had been returned to their foster families. Visiting Meng You, the little girl who had pleaded with her to go back home, was a highlight of her trip. The girl was completely different. In the company of her family, she was moving around, talking to the other children, and delighting in the company of the visitors.

“You could see how confident she was,” Jian says. “When she was in the orphanage, she was completely lost. She didn’t want

Holt's Xiao Xiao (left) and Sue Liu (right) help a foster mother and child in Jilin province.

Ron Waite, Holt’s Vice-President of Development, and a “Focus Team”—a delegation of donors—accompanied Jian on her return to Jilin. Although the children had been in foster care again for several months, the families greeted the visitors with the same enthusiasm and gratitude they had displayed when they got their children back in January.

“I think no one on this Focus Team really knew what to expect before they left,” said Ron. “Everyone was so obviously overwhelmed when nearly 60 beaming foster families with their children greeted us in Jilin with such joy. When you see with your own eyes these little children, what might have happened to them without any help, you understand what miracles even a small donation can achieve."