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This year, we were proud to donate our proceeds to UNICEF and Peng Cheng School for the Mentally Disabled.

UNICEF is one of the first organizations to support the care and protection of children affected by AIDS in China. During the past seven years, UNICEF has worked with the government of China, NGOs, international and bilateral organizations to support policy development and provide support at the community level.

While there is no official data on the number of children affected by AIDS in China, an estimate by academic institutions indicates that as of 2005, 140,000 children had lost one or both parents to AIDS, and around half a million children were living with HIV positive parents. Over 9,000 children had acquired HIV via mother to child transmission.

UNICEF and our partners work to keep children affected by AIDS in school and to keep them in loving, caring families and communities. We work to ensure that children and their families have access to health services, medicines and psycho-social support. Crucially, we also work to eliminate stigma and discrimination against persons living with HIV and children who are affected by support partners to foster community based responses, by promoting children’s participation, by helping to build up children’s resilience to overcome the impact of HIV/AIDS, by breaking the silence at community level, advocating for increased understanding of how stigma and discrimination affect children and their family, as well as the further impact on the society, and by supporting the government to set up an effective database on children affected by AIDS.

PengCheng Special Education School for Mentally Challenged Children, known as ‘Granny Han’s’
Mrs. Han Rufeng “Granny Han”, a retired teacher, discovered that no special education school would take her grandson, because his IQ was below the cut-off of 50.  So in 1999, this determined grandmother started her own school for children like her grandson, the Peng Cheng School for the Mentally Challenged. The school now helps over a hundred children – whose average IQ is 22 – acquire basic education and life skills, and dispenses medicine, food, and love. Children who once could not talk or clean themselves are learning to read; many of the students, despite a variety of disabilities, are making remarkable progress. On September 9, 2004, the Peng Cheng School celebrated the opening of its permanent school building.  Granny Han and her team of dedicated teachers can now continue to transform the lives and futures of children whose lives would otherwise be lost.