The Adventure Continues... On To Wuhan!
- Wuhan, Hubei Province - Page 2

According to Ms. Hu, there were over 100 school-age children and over 100 additional children from infant to preschool-age at the institute.  She said they were not worried that much about funding but I was not sure how the institution would manage to get money to support such a big number of children.

The orphanage, originally run by a missionary charity, had been taken over by the local government in 1954. Now they had education facilities ranging from kindergarten to junior high, which were also open to the general society.  This affords the children of the institution opportunities to be with children from outside the institution.
 
The institution was also called the Wuhan City Special Education School and provided special education to handicapped children from both inside and outside the institution.  As I was sitting in the reception office I saw a woman walking into the gate.  Ms Hu said she came to teach piano to a handicapped child.  There were also some volunteers working for the children in their spare time.
 
During the tour we walked into a palace-looking building that had been built in 1997 following a $2,000,000 donation from a Buddhist charity organization in Taiwan.  The four-story building is residence to over 200 children from several days old to teenagers.  We took an elevator all the way up to the fourth floor.  This was the young children's section.
 
We walked into one of the big rooms.  There were 18 metal cribs in the room and many of them were occupied with very young infants.  Every baby had a label tied on the rack of the crib.  On the label was the baby's birth date and the date the child came to the institute.  The youngest one was born on June 5th, 2000.  Ms. Hu said many of the babies in this room were under one month old.
 
Four caregivers were feeding children who could be walking around on hardwood floors.  A little girl of about 1-½ years old, wearing a blue jeans dress was whining. I bent over to her.  The caregiver let the little girl sit on her lap and she touched the little girl's nose with her fingers.  The little girl calmed down right away.  I said good-bye to the caregivers in this room. They seemed indifferent to my good-bye.  They were probably used to visitors and felt they might interfere with their daily work.

- Continued On Page 3 -

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