MianYang Introduction

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Principal: Second Tsang(曾秀來)

MianYang Herald Gratia Children Village, SiChuan Province, is the third children’s village founded jointly by the Hong Kong Gratia Foundation and the American Chinese Christian Herald Crusades, which is a social welfare institution managed by the Civil Affairs Bureau of China, providing full free foster care and education for orphaned and destitute children in China. It hospitalizes orphans and children, aged between 7-13, from poor families in cities and rural areas in all counties.

The children village’s mission is to provide these children a loving home, allowing the children to grow up in love, letting them comprehensively develop their morality, intellectuality, physical bodies, aesthetics and industriousness, bring them up to love themselves and the others and contribute to the community and the nation after they grow up.

The expenses of the children village are donated by national and overseas enthusiastic persons who are concerned about China and most of which are Christians. The children village is also covered by the “Two exemptions and one subsidy policy” of the Chinese government, i.e. exemption of miscellaneous fees and book expenses.

MianYang Herald Gratia Children Village consists of three dormitories, accommodating 214 children. All primary school students study in the WenChang Primary School of the local county, while kindergartners attend classes at the Northern Kindergarten. Currently, there are 12 staff, including a Principal, a Vice-Principal, an administrative assistant, two caring brothers, 5 caring sisters and 2 kitchen staff. Some are locally hired while the others come from the other provinces.

The children village has various facilities, such as computer rooms, library, activity rooms, basket court, volleyball court, badminton court, bicycles and skateboards, etc. At weekends, there are interest classes, like calligraphy, basketball, dancing and singing classes, letting the children stretch their bodies and minds and develop expertise after school.

The children village accepts four kinds of children: orphans whose parents both deceased, whose fathers died and their mothers remarried, whose relatives are unable to raise them, whose parents have disabilities and whose parents are imprisoned.

The admission procedure for orphans and destitute children is: the Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau provides the orphans’ name list and the Principal, accompanied by the staff of the bureau visits the various counties and villages to thoroughly examine the children’s situations. After the visits, decisions will be made to determine which families are the most needy. The Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau will inform the counties and the villages of the decisions and the approved families will complete the required formalities and the children enter the children village at the specified dates.

The children village is divided into 5 departments: administration, housing, education, health care and volunteer management.

This year we have accepted a total of 59 children from destitute families, 13 from An County, 28 from SanTai, 13 from YanTing and 5 from ZiTong. The children village divides the children into family homes, with each family home accommodating not more than 12 children and one caring brother/sister devoted to take of their daily lives, including living together and watching them 24 hours. Other than bringing the children to school during day time, the caring brothers/sisters tutor their homework during night time, understand their needs and comfort and encourage them.

Besides preparing interest classes during weekends, the children village also provide activities on various festivals to let the children experience various cultural elements from various countries, like our national festivals: Ching Ming Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, National Day and foreign festivals: Mother’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and worldwide events: the Olympic Games.

The children in the children village can enter high school after they finished primary school. For those who passed the senior high school entrance examination, they can continue to study in senior high school. For those who cannot pass the examine, they can return home voluntarily or attend vocational schools to develop special skills. For those who are admitted to universities/colleges, the children village will find various ways of helping them to finish their educations. We ensure fostering of the talents of these destitute children and let them become knowledgeable persons with noble characters, not only achieving self-reliance but also having loving hearts and abilities to help other needy persons, contributing back to the society and the nation.