In February 2019, AFD China launched a new round of fundraising activities as a part of our 3- year participation in the Phoenix Public Welfare Program. All the money raised is to be used to cover the rehabilitation, living and accommodation expenses in the year of 2019 of the cerebral palsy child. All donations were made through the China Changjiang River Charity Foundation in the name of individuals who participated. 42 of our colleagues joined the activities and showed their caring.
In the past 3 years, we have helped children with cerebral palsy to have successfully completed all the rehabilitation training and resumed normal social life. Such happy news continued cheering and driving us forward. This year, we met little Zhuang Zhuang (小壮壮) whose name bears the wish of the family of growing up strong and healthy. He was diagnosed with cerebral palsy shortly after birth. After his parents divorced, he lived with his mother while his father no longer fulfilled his duty of support. Adversity and difficulties made him suffer a tendency of autism in addition to the handicap.
Before our presence, little Zhuang Zhuang has lived in the Chenguang Rehabilitation Center for two years. The teachers there showed incredible love and gave him tremendous encouragements. He gradually opened up to people and started to actively take place in the rehabilitation trainings. Now he can walk upright. We are going to pick up the baton to help Zhuang Zhuang stand on his own feet and even take care of his family in the future. We hope to plant a seed of hope in his little heart and watch it bloom eventually.
Charity is a virtue of the heart, a unity of strengths. We do not need to be ambitious, we do not need to be abundant. As long as we have love, we offer our actions, we treat the world with good heart, the world will become a heartwarming haven for all of us. AFD welcomes caring people to join us, together shall pass down love.