First Hugs

Sunday, March 24, 2013

It's that time of year again! Krista- our Gracie's Room director-,  Cathy - our treasurer and Gracie's mom- and me- Moya, executive director of Dianjiang Kids- are back in Henan province.  We would love for you to follow along on our journey as we visit the children and staff of our Gracie's Room/First Hugs project at XinXiang in Henan province in China.

When we visited last year, we were convinced things had to change. This Gracie's Room /First Hugs project was not what we wanted it to be. It was too tough for our kids to be in Gracie's Room/First Hugs with our nannies special care and love for eight hours a day and then have to go back to the general orphanage population. We spoke with the orphanage director and we all agreed things had to change.

By the fall, the orphanage had moved to a beautiful new building and property. The orphanage helped us to hire a new manager for our Gracie's Room/First Hugs project who spoke English as well as Chinese so we could have better communication. We will introduce you to her later this week. We also hired new nannies/ayis. They receievd special training to understand child development and will continue to get new training.

So now our wonderful kiddoes are in a 24 hour a day program. They always get special love and attention. This week we will be visiting with the kids on loving on them. We will be learning how the new Gracie's Room is working and we will be offering our ideas  and training for activities during the day. We would love for you to follow along.

We arrived in Zhengzhou, Henan's capital, Friday night after a 30 plus hour day of travel. Today we made our way to Wal Mart and bought some board books for the kids. Tomorrow we head out to XinXiang for the week. We look forward to sharing with you!!


Moya