Giving Tree
Ziloulan Migrant School
December 15, 2011
What is Giving Tree? It is a program to provide essentials for the children of migrant workers in Shanghai. The program has a city wide coordinator, Michelle. She provided all the guidelines for the program. Then we had an advisor, and that would be Leslie. For this school, there were four sponsoring organizations: Concordia International School, Dell Computers, AGIF, and a Nursery School. We had just one school. For the overall Giving Tree Program, 16,000+ students were targeted and not sure what the count was for the total migrant schools. These schools are considered second class schools and are for the education of the children of the migrant workers that come into Shanghai to find work. It has only been the last year or so that these schools have become free and are now government sponsored.
These schools are typically on the outskirts of town and little migrant sub-communities will pop-up to support the needs of these workers and their families. The average monthly income is about 2000 RMB. If you are doing the math… that is less than $325 USD. They usually live in one room with a shared kitchen and bathroom with many other families… that is if they are one of the more fortunate. They are lucky if they have heat and most do not. The school has no heat either.
How did I get involved???? One Sunday, there was an announcement that they needed volunteers to help with Giving Tree and were looking for a Donor Coordinator to organize the project. As I sat there, I thought I would like to volunteer to help with this program. Seemed like a really worthwhile program and would be a great experience. After church, I sought out the person making the announcement, Brook. As I began to talk with him, all of a sudden … my mouth began to say something totally different than what my brain was thinking… and it was volunteering to be the Donor Coordinator although I had no idea what that really meant. We have laughed about this since then, but at the time I walked away thinking, ‘what just happened there?’ And that is how this whole thing really started for me.
AGIF was responsible for 300 bags. The members of the church had the option to take a bag and fill it or just to donate 200 RMB and we would buy and fill the bags. Each bag was assigned to a specific child. That is how we made sure that each child had a bag and everything you needed to know was on a card in the bag. So as we handed out each bag, we had to collect the sponsor information to make sure that we got the bag back or could follow up. So every Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, Michael and I manned a table at church to pass out bags and then collecting bags back.
Because of this low income and poverty conditions, the required items in the bags are so important. There were five required items that must be in each of the bags… a warm coat, hat, gloves, outside shoes, warm socks. Then the other suggested items were a toy, snacks and/or other personal items… toothbrush, hair brush, etc. Our goal was to get as much as possible with our 200 RMB so it meant we had to be smart about our shopping.
When all the bags were gone… we ended up with 200 bags from donations and 100 bags were actually taken to be filled individually. Of the 100 bags that went out…only 2 did not come back… so that was not terribly bad. However of the 100 bags, about 75 of them were missing one or more items… so we were glad we had managed to bargain well.
There is another organization called Home Sweet Home that supports the mentally and physically challenged. They make coats, hats, gloves, scarves, and a multitude of other items such as tea towels, place mats, aprons, pot holders… etc. You get the picture. We wanted to help two worthy causes in one, so we ordered the coats and hats from them… that was 85 RMB each and the biggest expense of our required items.
Our first Shopping Expedition… the day after Thanksgiving! If this had been the states it would have been bedlam, but given that China does not recognize or have any notion of Thanksgiving… which in this case, was good for us.
We hit a children’s shoe store in the shoe market… yes they have markets just for shoes. And I must tell you…it was a challenge to stay on task here. To get to the children’s stores, we had to pass the ladies shoes and boots. There were more shoes than I have ever seen in one building, every style, size and color one might want. Lin and I vowed to come back when we were just shopping for fun! As with most new places… I am in awe and forget to whip out the camera… but promise next time!
We bought over 200 pairs of shoes. We had budgeted 60-65 RMB per pair, but my bargaining powers got us these sneakers for 50 RMB a pair for all but 12 pairs, which we had to pay 60 RMB. They needed time to pull them all together from storage so we decided to take time and get a bite to eat. Soooo… off to Xitiandi (pronounced she-T-N-D) and a little lunch… We went to Kabb. Yuuuuummmmm!! Kabb is a place that caters to us westerners that have to get our fix of food from home. Pumpkins soup and salad really hit the spot for me on this chilly day!
My shopping companions… Snow and Lin. It helps when you are really looking for deep discounts to take a friend that speaks Chinese fluently!
It took the better part of the afternoon to sort and bag all the shoes… labeling with size and gender. We loaded them into the trunk and back seat of the car and headed back to Pudong. We were back and forth from the car to the apartment so many times with handfuls of bags of shoes I was exhausted by the time we were through. However I was really satisfied with our first day of shopping, very productive!
The second shopping day Lin had to handle on her own. Bless her for carrying on without me… I was knocked down hard with the flu. I was so bad that I immediately went to the doctor because my throat hurt like I have never felt. Much to my dismay… flu and my vocal cords were swollen so badly I completely lost my voice for about 4 days. I was in the bed for 5 days straight. It was not a good time for me to be sick, but I had no choice.
She focused on socks and toys. She found an excellent buy for socks. We had budgeted 10-12 RMB, but were able to get each pair for 1.90 RMB so we saved enough so that each child could get 2 pairs.
I had gone through the spreadsheet and sorted hobbies so that we could try to get toys that matched up with what the children liked or had an interest in. We had 25 RMB set for each child… but were able to get everything from 8-25 RMB so we had saved a little RMB here too.
By Friday, I was feeling well enough to get out for another shopping day. We hit YuYuan Commodities Market… another place to test our bargaining skills! We were doing really well with the budget… we needed to make the 200 RMB donated for each bag to stretch a long way! This time it was only Lin and I. She had never been to this commodities market… it was kinda cool to be able to show a Chinese person some place they did not know about. It is usually the other way around.
I have posted the pictures from the commodities market in a post …’ The Commodities Market’… so I won’t post again. We would hit the commodities market about 4 more times before we had everything.
I planned a Sorting Party for the volunteers to come to our place and we would assembly line the sorting and filling of bags. The sorting was really a combination of checking the contents of the bags for completeness and equalization. Since all these children would be opening the bags at the same time together, it was really important that each child had a similar amount of items so that no child felt bad at the end of the day.
Checking the bags were the most time consuming. To make sure all the required items were in the bags and they were fairly equal took so much time I was grateful there were only 100. Shirley and Christina spent the entire party doing just that.
Filling the bags from the donations was pretty easier compared to the checking work. We had bought everything, sorted it out into stations and then it was just a matter of walking from station to station and getting each item and putting it into the bag. We had everyone else doing just that. Thanks to Sally, Lin, Janet, Brook, Siew Peng, and Debbie .
The basement was an assembly line… All the items were sorted out into stations so you could just make the rounds to each section to fill a bag…
Shoes… shoes… and more shoes! Janet… looking for the right
size! All the shoes were lined up by whether it was for a boy or girl and size.
Gloves anyone! Sally is selecting 2 pairs for each bag… we were able to get one pair that the ends of the fingers are missing for wearing at school when they need to write and then another pair of warm mittens for outside. We were able to get the 2 pairs for 10 RMB a set.
Lots of socks for little boys and socks for little girls… Siew Peng and Sally making their selections for the bags they are filling for girls.
Everyone just quickly moving from station to station filling bags… Lin was added the toys at the end and did a final check to make sure all the items were in the bags.
The only things we did not have for the sorting party were the snacks. I still needed to go to the Carrefour to pick them up. I had hoped to have that done before Michael left for Malaysia for the week… but unfortunately that did not happen. That left me to select and manage all the snacks back to the apartment. So I bought suckers, Oreos, and Jello cups (they call them jelly cups) so that each child got one or more of each thing… so I had some boxes and bags to lug home! By the time I got home in the cab I was so wishing I had a car and driver! But I should finish my sorting story.
We lost helpers one at a time as the day wore on… until about 4pm it was down to Christina and I to finish the checking of the filled bags. We worked on it until we finished and had identified everything that was missing and what had to be purchased.
Christina and I spent the following Tuesday filling the bags with the snacks and anything we had purchased for anything missing. We did one final check to make sure they were good to go or identified anything missed. If they were complete the bag handles were tied, and a color coded ribbon identifying the classroom and grade was tied to the handle and the bag was moved upstairs.
We were down to only a few missing things at this point. Lin and I made a final order of shoes and went on the following day, Wednesday to get them and a few last things… we were cutting it close as the ceremony was only a day away.
That night Christina came back… we polished off the last of the bags…Whew! I never was so stressed and then soooo relieved to finally have it all done!!! Now it was just a matter of loading them into the truck the next morning at 8:00 am.
The truck was filled with 300 bags of treasures for the children. Thanks to Ben, Brook, the van driver, and one of the security guards at our compound… That van was loaded in about 15 minutes. What team work!! Then off to Concordia to transfer onto the buses headed for Ziloulan School.
Arrival at Ziloulan School… the children from the school are here to greet us! Concordia had about 200 students attend the ceremony.
Start unloading the bags off the buses… this is where the color coding was invaluable. It was how the children knew what classrooms to deliver the bags.
The children were so excited to see us and talk with us. The atmosphere was simply electric!
We were invited to join the children for lunch…
The food is prepared in a kitchen and then moved to this area where the children serve the food into containers that each child must bring with them. They bring their container and spoon from home. After they finish their food, which they eat in their classrooms, each child washes their own dishes in a big concrete trough. It honestly reminded me of concrete water troughs we had for the livestock when I was growing up. I wish I had thought to get a picture of it.
The group from AGIF…
Dally, Jodie, me, Jodie’s 2 girls, and Brook.
Brian and Adam are missing from this photo.
All the children are lining up for the ceremony. The air was buzzing with excitement.
The Ceremony… what an experience! The children were cheering as each one of us came on stage and then again as we were presented with our scarves... and as you began to speak!
As honored guests we were all presented with red scarves and the children them tied around our necks! The children that were chosen to present to us were also wearing the scarves to signify they were honoring the guests. China is steeped in traditions. Everything seems to mean something special.
This is the principle of the school. He too got a red scarf… which is an honor and sign of respect.
Brook and I with Leslie (in purple), our Advisor for the Giving Tree Project. She was so helpful with coordinating everything we needed to do.
I was surprised at the last minute with a ‘you need to speak to the children for 2-5 minutes’ at the last minute. Brook and I quickly decided I would address the kids in English and he would translate to Chinese. I put together a quick outline of points I wanted to make. I would use this opportunity to minister to the children about why we celebrate Christmas. I wanted them to hear a little about God and Jesus… that the Lord gave us this amazing gift of his son to teach us and provide a way to salvation... but in words that this age would understand. God gave us this amazing gift… our Lord and Savior. In keeping with God’s spirit of giving, we would like to share with them with these bags.
Concordia did a short re-creation of the nativity.
Now the Giving Tree Song… simply beautiful! I have a short little video clip I can share. Ok... so that is not my real strong suit...but you can at least hear the song. But after 45 minutes of waiting for it to upload... alas I had to cancel... I will continue to work on that later.
They wanted to open the bags so bad and their teacher really drug out the wait.
Let the bags be opened!!! Organized Chaos for sure!!!
Nothing like the pure joy a new pair of pink sneakers or a Barbie doll brings to a child… Or a computer game!
The children had drawn and painted pictures to give to us as a token of thank you. They pictures were amazing and I will treasure them forever. Memories for a life time were made today with these wonderful children. I will cherish these mementos always.
Next we were on to the kindergartener class.
These little ones were crazy fun! This one little boy... that coat was not coming off and DON’T even think about taking that tag off!
The rest of our AGIF group… Dally, Brian and Adam!
The Giving Tree… Although it was a lot of work and very stressful… I got so much more than we could have imagined from this experience. The children were so warm, inviting and gracious. We received so much more than we gave them. I would not trade this opportunity no matter how stressful or how hard the work was leading up to this day. I left with a life time of memories to take with me for always.
Thank you Giving Tree for the wonderful Blessings…
Ziloulan Migrant School
December 15, 2011
What is Giving Tree? It is a program to provide essentials for the children of migrant workers in Shanghai. The program has a city wide coordinator, Michelle. She provided all the guidelines for the program. Then we had an advisor, and that would be Leslie. For this school, there were four sponsoring organizations: Concordia International School, Dell Computers, AGIF, and a Nursery School. We had just one school. For the overall Giving Tree Program, 16,000+ students were targeted and not sure what the count was for the total migrant schools. These schools are considered second class schools and are for the education of the children of the migrant workers that come into Shanghai to find work. It has only been the last year or so that these schools have become free and are now government sponsored.
These schools are typically on the outskirts of town and little migrant sub-communities will pop-up to support the needs of these workers and their families. The average monthly income is about 2000 RMB. If you are doing the math… that is less than $325 USD. They usually live in one room with a shared kitchen and bathroom with many other families… that is if they are one of the more fortunate. They are lucky if they have heat and most do not. The school has no heat either.
How did I get involved???? One Sunday, there was an announcement that they needed volunteers to help with Giving Tree and were looking for a Donor Coordinator to organize the project. As I sat there, I thought I would like to volunteer to help with this program. Seemed like a really worthwhile program and would be a great experience. After church, I sought out the person making the announcement, Brook. As I began to talk with him, all of a sudden … my mouth began to say something totally different than what my brain was thinking… and it was volunteering to be the Donor Coordinator although I had no idea what that really meant. We have laughed about this since then, but at the time I walked away thinking, ‘what just happened there?’ And that is how this whole thing really started for me.
AGIF was responsible for 300 bags. The members of the church had the option to take a bag and fill it or just to donate 200 RMB and we would buy and fill the bags. Each bag was assigned to a specific child. That is how we made sure that each child had a bag and everything you needed to know was on a card in the bag. So as we handed out each bag, we had to collect the sponsor information to make sure that we got the bag back or could follow up. So every Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, Michael and I manned a table at church to pass out bags and then collecting bags back.
Because of this low income and poverty conditions, the required items in the bags are so important. There were five required items that must be in each of the bags… a warm coat, hat, gloves, outside shoes, warm socks. Then the other suggested items were a toy, snacks and/or other personal items… toothbrush, hair brush, etc. Our goal was to get as much as possible with our 200 RMB so it meant we had to be smart about our shopping.
When all the bags were gone… we ended up with 200 bags from donations and 100 bags were actually taken to be filled individually. Of the 100 bags that went out…only 2 did not come back… so that was not terribly bad. However of the 100 bags, about 75 of them were missing one or more items… so we were glad we had managed to bargain well.
There is another organization called Home Sweet Home that supports the mentally and physically challenged. They make coats, hats, gloves, scarves, and a multitude of other items such as tea towels, place mats, aprons, pot holders… etc. You get the picture. We wanted to help two worthy causes in one, so we ordered the coats and hats from them… that was 85 RMB each and the biggest expense of our required items.
Our first Shopping Expedition… the day after Thanksgiving! If this had been the states it would have been bedlam, but given that China does not recognize or have any notion of Thanksgiving… which in this case, was good for us.
We hit a children’s shoe store in the shoe market… yes they have markets just for shoes. And I must tell you…it was a challenge to stay on task here. To get to the children’s stores, we had to pass the ladies shoes and boots. There were more shoes than I have ever seen in one building, every style, size and color one might want. Lin and I vowed to come back when we were just shopping for fun! As with most new places… I am in awe and forget to whip out the camera… but promise next time!
We bought over 200 pairs of shoes. We had budgeted 60-65 RMB per pair, but my bargaining powers got us these sneakers for 50 RMB a pair for all but 12 pairs, which we had to pay 60 RMB. They needed time to pull them all together from storage so we decided to take time and get a bite to eat. Soooo… off to Xitiandi (pronounced she-T-N-D) and a little lunch… We went to Kabb. Yuuuuummmmm!! Kabb is a place that caters to us westerners that have to get our fix of food from home. Pumpkins soup and salad really hit the spot for me on this chilly day!
My shopping companions… Snow and Lin. It helps when you are really looking for deep discounts to take a friend that speaks Chinese fluently!
It took the better part of the afternoon to sort and bag all the shoes… labeling with size and gender. We loaded them into the trunk and back seat of the car and headed back to Pudong. We were back and forth from the car to the apartment so many times with handfuls of bags of shoes I was exhausted by the time we were through. However I was really satisfied with our first day of shopping, very productive!
The second shopping day Lin had to handle on her own. Bless her for carrying on without me… I was knocked down hard with the flu. I was so bad that I immediately went to the doctor because my throat hurt like I have never felt. Much to my dismay… flu and my vocal cords were swollen so badly I completely lost my voice for about 4 days. I was in the bed for 5 days straight. It was not a good time for me to be sick, but I had no choice.
She focused on socks and toys. She found an excellent buy for socks. We had budgeted 10-12 RMB, but were able to get each pair for 1.90 RMB so we saved enough so that each child could get 2 pairs.
I had gone through the spreadsheet and sorted hobbies so that we could try to get toys that matched up with what the children liked or had an interest in. We had 25 RMB set for each child… but were able to get everything from 8-25 RMB so we had saved a little RMB here too.
By Friday, I was feeling well enough to get out for another shopping day. We hit YuYuan Commodities Market… another place to test our bargaining skills! We were doing really well with the budget… we needed to make the 200 RMB donated for each bag to stretch a long way! This time it was only Lin and I. She had never been to this commodities market… it was kinda cool to be able to show a Chinese person some place they did not know about. It is usually the other way around.
I have posted the pictures from the commodities market in a post …’ The Commodities Market’… so I won’t post again. We would hit the commodities market about 4 more times before we had everything.
I planned a Sorting Party for the volunteers to come to our place and we would assembly line the sorting and filling of bags. The sorting was really a combination of checking the contents of the bags for completeness and equalization. Since all these children would be opening the bags at the same time together, it was really important that each child had a similar amount of items so that no child felt bad at the end of the day.
Checking the bags were the most time consuming. To make sure all the required items were in the bags and they were fairly equal took so much time I was grateful there were only 100. Shirley and Christina spent the entire party doing just that.
Filling the bags from the donations was pretty easier compared to the checking work. We had bought everything, sorted it out into stations and then it was just a matter of walking from station to station and getting each item and putting it into the bag. We had everyone else doing just that. Thanks to Sally, Lin, Janet, Brook, Siew Peng, and Debbie .
The basement was an assembly line… All the items were sorted out into stations so you could just make the rounds to each section to fill a bag…
Shoes… shoes… and more shoes! Janet… looking for the right
size! All the shoes were lined up by whether it was for a boy or girl and size.
Gloves anyone! Sally is selecting 2 pairs for each bag… we were able to get one pair that the ends of the fingers are missing for wearing at school when they need to write and then another pair of warm mittens for outside. We were able to get the 2 pairs for 10 RMB a set.
Lots of socks for little boys and socks for little girls… Siew Peng and Sally making their selections for the bags they are filling for girls.
Everyone just quickly moving from station to station filling bags… Lin was added the toys at the end and did a final check to make sure all the items were in the bags.
The only things we did not have for the sorting party were the snacks. I still needed to go to the Carrefour to pick them up. I had hoped to have that done before Michael left for Malaysia for the week… but unfortunately that did not happen. That left me to select and manage all the snacks back to the apartment. So I bought suckers, Oreos, and Jello cups (they call them jelly cups) so that each child got one or more of each thing… so I had some boxes and bags to lug home! By the time I got home in the cab I was so wishing I had a car and driver! But I should finish my sorting story.
We lost helpers one at a time as the day wore on… until about 4pm it was down to Christina and I to finish the checking of the filled bags. We worked on it until we finished and had identified everything that was missing and what had to be purchased.
Christina and I spent the following Tuesday filling the bags with the snacks and anything we had purchased for anything missing. We did one final check to make sure they were good to go or identified anything missed. If they were complete the bag handles were tied, and a color coded ribbon identifying the classroom and grade was tied to the handle and the bag was moved upstairs.
We were down to only a few missing things at this point. Lin and I made a final order of shoes and went on the following day, Wednesday to get them and a few last things… we were cutting it close as the ceremony was only a day away.
That night Christina came back… we polished off the last of the bags…Whew! I never was so stressed and then soooo relieved to finally have it all done!!! Now it was just a matter of loading them into the truck the next morning at 8:00 am.
The truck was filled with 300 bags of treasures for the children. Thanks to Ben, Brook, the van driver, and one of the security guards at our compound… That van was loaded in about 15 minutes. What team work!! Then off to Concordia to transfer onto the buses headed for Ziloulan School.
Arrival at Ziloulan School… the children from the school are here to greet us! Concordia had about 200 students attend the ceremony.
Start unloading the bags off the buses… this is where the color coding was invaluable. It was how the children knew what classrooms to deliver the bags.
The children were so excited to see us and talk with us. The atmosphere was simply electric!
We were invited to join the children for lunch…
The food is prepared in a kitchen and then moved to this area where the children serve the food into containers that each child must bring with them. They bring their container and spoon from home. After they finish their food, which they eat in their classrooms, each child washes their own dishes in a big concrete trough. It honestly reminded me of concrete water troughs we had for the livestock when I was growing up. I wish I had thought to get a picture of it.
Dally, Jodie, me, Jodie’s 2 girls, and Brook.
Brian and Adam are missing from this photo.
All the children are lining up for the ceremony. The air was buzzing with excitement.
The Ceremony… what an experience! The children were cheering as each one of us came on stage and then again as we were presented with our scarves... and as you began to speak!
As honored guests we were all presented with red scarves and the children them tied around our necks! The children that were chosen to present to us were also wearing the scarves to signify they were honoring the guests. China is steeped in traditions. Everything seems to mean something special.
This is the principle of the school. He too got a red scarf… which is an honor and sign of respect.
Brook and I with Leslie (in purple), our Advisor for the Giving Tree Project. She was so helpful with coordinating everything we needed to do.
I was surprised at the last minute with a ‘you need to speak to the children for 2-5 minutes’ at the last minute. Brook and I quickly decided I would address the kids in English and he would translate to Chinese. I put together a quick outline of points I wanted to make. I would use this opportunity to minister to the children about why we celebrate Christmas. I wanted them to hear a little about God and Jesus… that the Lord gave us this amazing gift of his son to teach us and provide a way to salvation... but in words that this age would understand. God gave us this amazing gift… our Lord and Savior. In keeping with God’s spirit of giving, we would like to share with them with these bags.
Concordia did a short re-creation of the nativity.
Now the Giving Tree Song… simply beautiful! I have a short little video clip I can share. Ok... so that is not my real strong suit...but you can at least hear the song. But after 45 minutes of waiting for it to upload... alas I had to cancel... I will continue to work on that later.
With the ceremony concluded, it is time to head to the classrooms… the children were so excited. Brook and I went to a second grade class that received our bags.
They wanted to open the bags so bad and their teacher really drug out the wait.
Let the bags be opened!!! Organized Chaos for sure!!!
Nothing like the pure joy a new pair of pink sneakers or a Barbie doll brings to a child… Or a computer game!
The children had drawn and painted pictures to give to us as a token of thank you. They pictures were amazing and I will treasure them forever. Memories for a life time were made today with these wonderful children. I will cherish these mementos always.
Next we were on to the kindergartener class.
These little ones were crazy fun! This one little boy... that coat was not coming off and DON’T even think about taking that tag off!
The rest of our AGIF group… Dally, Brian and Adam!
The Giving Tree… Although it was a lot of work and very stressful… I got so much more than we could have imagined from this experience. The children were so warm, inviting and gracious. We received so much more than we gave them. I would not trade this opportunity no matter how stressful or how hard the work was leading up to this day. I left with a life time of memories to take with me for always.
Thank you Giving Tree for the wonderful Blessings…
