Dear Friends,

While 2008 has brought us many extraordinary challenges, The Grace Children’s Foundation (TGCF) has experienced a stream of support for a strategy that has been developed to help alleviate some of the enormous burden facing orphaned and disadvantaged children in China. Through TGCF’s Resource Exchange Center we are implementing a mechanism in China that is innovative and groundbreaking—connecting medical/surgical, education and vocation and humanitarian aid needs of the children to the remedies they deserve.

In these unprecedented times we are coming together to help each other, our neighbors near and far. No matter what your walk of life, nearly all of us have had to make changes and adjustments in our routines in order to fulfill our obligations to family and profession. At the same time, orphaned and disadvantaged children in China still have many pressing needs.

This past year The Grace Children’s Foundation has met with individuals and prominent international and locally-based organizations working in the field that care for orphaned and disadvantaged children. We have witnessed those caregivers’ constant struggle to access appropriate resources that help the children in their care and enable them to reenter their society as they age out of the system. Most often the care facilities look to adoption as the desired outcome for these children.  However, at its peak, adoption as a means to enter any society affects only a fraction of the children in need.

Our extended stay in China in the spring of 2008 reinforced the need for a central base of resources connecting the needs to the remedies. We lived in Beijing before, during and after the devastating earthquake and traveled outside the city to meet with many dedicated individuals and organizations serving the children. In all of our meetings and correspondence we witnessed no lack of commitment, just a disjointed effort by those organizations not being able to tap the resources of one another. Their needs most often mirrored each other’s … medical care, education and vocation and humanitarian aid.  Our experience over the past decade has affirmed that this constant struggle and inability to tap into available resources for lack of a central base ultimately dilutes the extraordinary impact left by those who serve the children. TGCF’s Resource Exchange Center helps alleviate the struggle—connecting the need to the remedy.

While China and the United States have joined together in a leadership role in addressing those needs it is apparent that this is not a China problem. This is a global problem. Without systematic change that connects the need to the remedy there is no hope for children in dire circumstances—those without enough to eat and basic necessities, without medical care, and those children who are left uneducated. All of these children are our future. 

We began this incredible journey to China in America, a nation of benevolent and compassionate people. We have made excellent friends and gained positive attention in cooperation with both governments here and in China and with people who have embraced our actions on behalf of the children who wait. It is a first step on this road to healing but as the
Chinese say, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Our vision is to see the children in a place where they have elevated themselves beyond survival, where they may flourish and have a chance for lives with dignity and purpose.

Sincerely,

Nancy Robertson
President and CEO