All the Northwestern chapter of China Care wants for Christmas this year is emergency heart surgery for an orphan baby in China.
The student volunteer group is raising several thousand dollars for Dang Gui Ai, a girl a little less than a year old. Gui Ai’s parents gave her up for adoption because she has a congenital heart defect that makes her chances of surviving past her first birthday without surgery small, according to an e-mail from China Care’s national office.
“At times she can barely lift her arm up she is so weak,” the e-mail said. “In the last couple of weeks two babies in our children’s homes have passed away from heart problems that we were not able to address in time.”
The China Care Foundation was founded in 2000 with the goal of improving the lives of Chinese orphans and facilitating their adoption into American families.
Gui Ai is staying at the China Care Children’s Home in Beijing. The group’s deadline for collecting donations is Dec. 1.
“We’re shooting to send some money before Thanksgiving,” said Kali Zhou, the group’s co-fundraising director, “because she really needs the surgery by mid-December.”
The first college chapter of China Care, which is at Harvard University, approached NU’s chapter last week, as well as ones at Emory University and University of Texas at Austin, about jointly raising the $10,000 needed for Gui Ai’s surgery, said Alyssa Huang, co-fundraising director of China Care at NU. Each school was asked to collect about $3,000.
The group’s executive board already has raised about $2,000 by asking friends, family and people at NU to donate to the cause. The support from the university has been great, said Huang, a Weinberg sophomore.
“I raised $140 in one day, ” she said. “It was so easy. People are so generous.”
China Care held an informational meeting Tuesday evening in the Multicultural Center. About 30 students received information on Gui Ai’s situation and individual fundraising packets as well as advice on how to raise money quickly. The group printed pamphlets to distribute to students, and the executive board has asked local businesses for donations. Students also can put donations in a box at the front desk of Norris University Center.
“We aren’t limiting ourselves to $3,000,” Zhou said. “Our goal is to help one child at a time, and there are always more kids to help.”
Gui Ai’s situation is more common in China because of a tradition that children need to provide for their parents after retiment, Huang said. Some girls, especially those born with medical conditions or deformities, end up in orphanages or working in factories, she added.
Zhou, a native of China and a Weinberg sophomore, said the government’s restriction on the number of children per family makes many parents abandon female babies.
“I’m from China and I’m a girl,” she said. “I know how hard it is especially with the one-child-one-family rule, because it’s such a patriarchal society.”
Weinberg juniors Ya Chin Chang and Kuangyan Huang founded NU’s chapter of China Care last spring. This is the group’s first fundraising effort.
“We try to make it as personal as possible,” said Chang. “We want to make people feel they’re personally helping the kids.”
Zhou said most donors seem ready and willing to help China Care fund Gui Ai’s surgery.
“It’s hard not to help when her life is on the line,” she said. “When you see her picture you can’t not want to help her.”
Members of the NU community interested in helping China Care can contact Chang at [email protected] or Huang at [email protected].
Reach Christina Alexander at [email protected].
