Happy New Year!

 

All of us at Dianjiang Kids International would like to wish all our family, friends and supporters a Happy Chinese New Year.  2012 is the year of the Dragon!  We are delighted to report that there has been a buzz of activities happening for the children. 

Hurrah! We have been talking about our return to Gracie’s Room in XinXiang for some time now,  but we have finally booked tickets. I have booked tickets for me ( Moya Smith, executive director of DJ Kids) and my younger daughter (a Dianjiang girl) to head to XinXiang at the beginning of March. We will be joined by Krista Dolan, our Grace’s Room coordinator and by Cathy Reilly, DJ Kids treasurer and most importantly, mom to Gracie. Xia Zhong of Chinese Children’s Charities will be with us for the first few days as we visit several other non-profits working with children in China.

We had hoped Gracie’s Room and, of course, the rest of the orphanage, would have moved to the new orphanage by now but there has been some bureucratic hold up. No worries, with the help of many generous friends, we have gathered tons of stuff ( see our next blog entry) from our Gracie’s room wih list on Amazon and will be delivering new toys and clothes and decorations to the room. And perhaps most importantly, plenty of vitamins for the kids!!

We have plans while we are there to brighten up the room. No use waiting for the move. We will be buying paint and hunkering down to brighten up the walls while there; we also hope to have some shelves built for all the new toys. We are so excited to check on the kids in Gracie’s Room and to begin talks with the director about making Gracie’s Room a 24 hour a day, seven day a week program.

If you would care to chip in, click on the chip in bar to help us pay for paint and materials for the bookcase. We also hope to take the ayis shopping for clothes and supplies for the kids while we are there. We hope to bring about $500 to meet all their wishes for now.

As a thank you for your help, all supporters who participate with the chip in will receive a FREE 18" chinese silk dress for a doll/bear!

We are also very excited to have a volunteer videographer join us and document our journey!  We will be able to share this video with all of you and for other opportunities to obtain much needed support and grants for the orphanage.  We thought it would be a wonderful opportunity for those of you who would like to volunteer with this portion of the trip.  We are seeking Canadian air miles to help our volunteer travel to China. 

Points needed from Canada with Aeroplan are 75,000
Points needed from Canada with Airmiles are 13,950

If you or anyone you know has extra miles and would be willing to donate them to our cause, please contact Krista Dolan.

Thanks for all your support and be sure to follow us here starting in March for our trip to China!

To attract good fortune, spend a new coin on an old friend, share an old pleasure with a new friend, and lift up the heart of a true friend by writing his name on the wings of a dragon.  -Chinese Proverb

Wish List Update!

I hope you have all enjoyed your Christmas celebrations and are ready for the New Year ahead! As we are all making New Years resolutions, one of mine I wanted to share was to help the children of Dianjiang a little more during the year of 2012!

The first step would be to complete our wish list so Moya and Krista can deliver the items to the children. Imagine the kids enjoyment and surprise when they receive all the items off the list.

One major important item still on the wish list-- vitamins. We all know they are needed to ensure the children have the supplements they require.  I would love if any of you who have not purchased anything from the list would take a peek and perhaps purchase one! They are actually on sale now too, so it is the perfect time to do so.

We understand that times are tough for everyone, but if you can make one tiny sacrifice it would make such a huge impact! Here is the link in case you would like to contribute:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/registry.html?ie=UTF8&type=wishlist&id=1KWZVU5KMYKQK

Thank you in advance for helping the children of Dianjiang!

Happy New Year!

Featured Product from our Wish List

As you know, we have kicked off the fundraiser, mailed out the newsletter and introduced our new tee shirts!  We sure have been busy here at DJ.  With that said, there are many things needed from our wish list.  We will be certain to share with you every few days some items from our wish list.  We hope this will encourage you to view the needed items and perhaps pass them along to your family and friends. 

Today's featured item is Little Critter Vites!  Click here if you would like to purchase!  Thank you!

Growing Gracie's Room

Gracie’s Room is Growing and we need your help!

Due to delays in government funding and construction, XinXiang is not due to move into the new orphanage until October 2012. 

Until then we would like to make the current room as bright, colourful and warm as possible - just as you would want your own child’s nursery to be. We want Gracie’s Room to be a room that stimulates the children’s senses for proper development, a room where they can lie on their bellies on a soft, clean mat, exercising and developing their muscles, a room where they are discovering sights and sounds with nursery rhymes and colourful walls, all the while having a figure encouraging, loving them and helping them to grow!

The current Gracie’s Room is in desperate need of upgrades. No improvements were put into this existing room as we were expecting to be in the new facility by October 2011. We instead focused on staffing and immediate needs of the children.

As the transition is now delayed by a full year, we need to double our fund-raising efforts to maintain the childcare and to make improvements to the existing room.

To accomplish this Dianjiang Kids International is launching our biggest fund-raising event ever:

Growing Gracie’s Room

Gracie’s Room now has a wish list on Amazon.com
Vitamins, cleft lip/cleft palate bottles, sippy cups, toys and wall decals are just some of the items listed.

Donations of baby quilts, hats, socks and mittens have already been offered!
Monetary donations will be used to replace the existing foam matts, repair broken windows and winterize the room.

Investments in growing the existing Gracie’s Room will be able to be moved over to the new building in 2012.

Please visit our link, do a little shopping and remember the children.
www.amazon.com/
Click on wishes and then type in Gracie’s Room.

Or click on:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/registry.html?ie=UTF8&type=wishlist&id=1KWZVU5KMYKQK

Monetary donations may be made through our website at
http://www.dianjiangkids.org/#!__donations

All items will be hand delivered to Gracie’s Room in March, 2012 by members of Dianjiang Kids board.

Changes for XinXiang!

Our summer may be winding down, however XinXiang’s is winding up for a huge change!

After an unexpected stop in construction, they are now gearing up to move into the new orphanage in October!

Currently we have 15 children in our Gracie’s Room Program and XinXiang has asked us to continue our work in the new building. We have been given a large bright room with two adjoining rooms, one is a bathing area and the other will act as an infirmary.

All of the rooms need to be furnished, painted and brightly decorated! This is our job! The orphanage has given us the rooms, now it is up to us to paint, decorate and furnish it!! Any interior decorators out there??? We would love to hear everyone’s suggestions!

Nine of our fifteen children are brand new arrivals to Gracie’s Room and we know they will benefit greatly from the love and care of the nannies.

We have had one adoption this year, so far, and her family says she is doing amazing and can’t imagine life with out her or her contagious smile!!

We also have two more children that will be in the arms of their forever families hopefully by the end of the new year.

Stay tuned for information on an upcoming fundraiser to help decorate Gracie’s Room!

Happy Birthday Wishes

DJ would like to wish a very happy birthday to Anna D! Anna turns 7 today and is described by her mom Lisa as a "spunky spitfire"! Anna also recently celebrated her Adoption Day with her family on June 13. She has a sister, who is adopted from Hunan, and is 19 months older.

We wish her a happy day with lots of love and CAKE!!

It's Giveaway Time!

Wow, it has been a little busy and hectic, but remember I said that we would be hosting our first giveaway?? Well, finally it's here!

In an effort to help honor our families everywhere, we wanted to offer this special Family Necklace to one lucky winner!

All you have to do is leave a comment below this post and we will pick a winner at random. If you want a chance to enter twice, become a fan on our facebook page too. Come back and post another comment letting us know you are now a fan. If you are already a fan and want a second chance, just let us know by posting a second comment as well.

One lucky random winner will receive the necklace and have it mailed to them within two weeks from the date pulled. The giveaway will be from today until June 29th. The winner will be announced on June 30th! The winner will have 24 hours to email confirmation to us. If we do not hear from the winner after 24 hours, we will pull another random name and so forth until we get a winner!

Good luck and be sure to spread the news about this giveaway to all your family and friends!