Heart to Heart Shanghai provides support and financial assistance to needy Chinese children who require heart surgery to repair their congenital heart defects. Volunteers of Heart to Heart generally fall into the following categories: knitter, fundraiser, assembler (sewing on buttons and dressing bears) and hospital playroom buddies. My involvement mostly includes assembling (I am now a very efficient button sewer) and hospital playroom visits (where I sit and play with play doh and building blocks with children who have been admitted to the hospital for life saving/changing hole in the heart surgery).
Jing de Zhen is the home of china (porcelain) and is found in the Jiangxi province in the south east region of China. Although only a 1 hour flight from Shanghai, myself and 13 volunteers, 2 doctors and 1 nurse and our driver Mr Hu set off on a 9 hour road trip (thats 9 hours each way). The city is very pretty and anything that can be made of china is made of china - even down to the lamp posts!
The trip was a massive eye opener for me, it was my first trip within China everything was new from the beautiful landscape (complete with hillside tea plantations), crazy road signs, the local Jing de Zhen cuisine (yummy) to the at times not so pleasant ammenities!
We visited with 12 children from the region who had received an operation through including 3 visits to the childrens family home - a wonderful and humbling experience. In my opinion the family unit in China must be among the strongest in the world. Grandparents care for grandchildren while the parents go to work in the city's (often only coming home once a year to see their families for New Year celebrations), meanwhile children take care of aging parents as their needs change. The Chinese family is a very loving and caring environment.
We also visited 3 primary schools to donate a library and computer to each. This experience was amazing, fun and at the same time heart breaking. The schools were mostly situated in small villages a couple of hours outside of the city, many children walk up to an hour plus to attend classes each day. The schools generally have few resources, to the point that once the classroom chalk runs out teachers must lick their fingers to use as writing implements on the board. The welcome we received at each school was overwhelming, firstly the school children attended school on Saturday in order to see us (infact the whole village attended school for our visits) and all were dressed in their Sunday finest! We were greeted with sining, cheering, flowers, neck ties and even had one of the village's women's dance troup perform for us. Many of us were bought to tears over the whole village's gratitude.
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