Children's Day brings smiles to foreign-invested charity

(English.news.cn)
Updated: 2012-06-04

Tim and Pam Baker were very busy on Friday as volunteers from across China treated Children's Day as an opportunity to gather at the couple's orphanage, bringing gifts and artistic performances to their young charges.

Situated in a suburban area in north China's Tianjin municipality, the Shepherd's Field Children's Village, which was founded by the US couple in 2006, is now China's largest foreign-invested charity of its kind.

The center has provided a home for more than 3,000 orphans, most of them handicapped, since establishment. Over 80 kids now live there, the youngest just a month old and the oldest over 10.

Visitors to the village on Friday include volunteers and majority of them are netizens who are moved and attracted by the couple's virtuous deeds.

The story of the Bakers has been widely spread among Chinese netizens and some praise the couple as "Guardian of Chinese orphans and handicapped children".

Ninety-five percent of the children helped by the Bakers have disabilities, were abandoned at birth, and have been refused by other welfare homes on account of their conditions, according to Tim Baker.

He says, no matter what kind of disability a child has, his orphanage will accept them and get them hospital treatment.

The Shepherd's Field Children's Village currently has four kids in Beijing having surgery, and each year arranges 30 to 40 medical procedures to treat problems ranging from heart defects to cleft lips.

Baker, 55, began adopting and helping Chinese orphans 20 years ago.

In 1991, when he and Pam were teaching at Beihang University in Beijing, they started to donate children's products and food to local welfare homes in the cities of Beijing, Tianjin and Shijiazhuang.

A year later, they adopted a little girl from Guiyang Orphanage in southwest China's Guizhou Province and named her Esther.

Several years passed before they took in three more children -- a pair of twin brothers and a baby boy with a cleft lip.

Then, in 1995, they started a small welfare home -- the Philip Hayden Foundation -- in order to take care of more orphans.

In 2002, the foundation looked to expand its scope and got a piece of land donated by the local government. The Shepherd's Field Children's Village was opened four years later.

Baker explains that, after two decades living in China, he sees himself as a Chinese. Nevertheless, he often has to fly back to the United States to raise donations.

At the same time, Baker also takes responsibility to persuade people to adopt the center's children, successfully securing adoptions for around 30 of the youngsters annually.

More than 900 children from his orphanage have found a family and most of the parents are from the United States, according to Baker.

For Tim and Pam, there is still one obstacle. They have started to build a 3,000-square-meter vocational center for teenagers, where older children will be able to learn some working skills.

But, lacking capital, the construction project has been stalled for a year.

However, no trouble can reduce the couple's passion for helping kids in need.

Baker sees himself staying in China with the children until the end of his life. Though he and his wife are too old to adopt any more kids, he says, this job can be passed over to their children and grandchildren.