The Amity Foundation

Letter from an Amity Teacher

To ensure no students from his village are deprived as he was, he voluntarily eats cheaper meals in the school cafeteria to save his money, and uses those savings to buy old computers, fix them, and then use them in his lessons. He has lobbied the Amity Foundation for the funds to build a women’s health clinic near his hometown, and has also used the money he has made from his teaching to pay for his adopted sister’s education.

Amity teacher Rachel Sterrett writes about her recent visit to a poor village in the countryside of Gansu Province, where she stayed with the family of a very unusual student.

Australian Anglican Mission head visits Amity

The executive director of the Anglican Board of Mission – Australia, the Rev. John Deane, recently visited the headquarters of the Amity Foundation in Nanjing. He discussed matters related to a cooperation with Amity with Assistant General Secretary He Wen and the assistant director of project management, Helen Zhao Jingwen. The cooperation between both organisations, environmental protection, community-based development, women’s projects and disaster relief work were among the topics of the discussion.

Mr. Deane expressed his hope that the Anglican Board of Mission – Australia and the Amity Foundation will establish a long-term cooperation.

Amity-HBM Blind Education Project Forum

Amity General Secretary Qiu with HBM representatives

Representatives of Hildesheimer Blindenmission (HBM), a German Christian charity which has worked in education for blind people in Asia for almost 120 years and a long-term Amity partner, visited the Amity Foundation headquarters last week. Amity and HBM hosted a “Blind Education Project Forum” on 20 October in collaboration with principals and teachers from the Nanjing and Zhejiang schools for the blind and special education schools in the cities of Yangzhou, Xuzhou and Lianyungang.

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The 4th Amity Round Table Meeting

The whole group in front of the provisional church of Mianzhu

The 4th Amity Round Table Meeting was held in Nanjing from 14 to 16 October. After the end of the Round Table Meeting, many participants travelled on to the region devastated by the May 2008 Mianzhu earthquake.

Participants were representatives of Amity’s international partner organisations in Asia, Europe and North America, close to 30 people altogether. Chinese pastors and representatives of CCC/TSPM attended the Round Table, too. The Amity Round Table Meeting is held every other year. It is the main forum for exchanging ideas and learning from each other between Amity and its overseas partner organisations.

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The Amity Bakery’s Mooncake Campaign

Before Mid-Autumn Festival, when Chinese people eat and share mooncakes, the Amity Bakery launched a small campaign, inviting people online to donate mooncakes for the elderly and orphans. The campaign turned out to be a great success. Shortly after it was launched, the website appealing for donations received over 18,000 hits. Donors from China and elsewhere emptied their pockets to pay for several hundred boxes of mooncakes.

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Primary Schools Reopened

As part of Amity’s primary school reconstruction project, new school buildings have been finished this year in 9 different mountain villages in the provinces of Guangxi, Sichuan and Shaanxi. A large number of children have thus been able to start the new term in shiny new classrooms.

The Shuangti Village Primary School in Yongxing, Qu County, Sichuan, is one of the schools rebuilt with Amity’s support. It had been allowed to fall into disrepair for many years and was classified as a “D” grade derelict building by the relevant government department in March 2006.

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Urgent Appeal: Help Typhoon Victims in the Philippines

Dear Friends of Amity,

Relief for Typhoon Victims in the Philippines

I am writing to appeal for your support to provide urgently needed funds for relief work for the victims of Typhoon Ketsana (known locally as Ondoy), which devastated Metro-Manila and surrounding areas on September 26th 2009.

Road becomes river

Typhoon Kestana brought the highest rainfall in more than 40 years with floodwaters in some areas reaching almost 13.5 meters high, submerging the homes of more than 2 million people. More than 300 people have died and the numbers are mounting. Kaisa Para Sa Kaunlaran (菲律賓華裔青年聯合會), an organization of Chinese Filipino youth in the Philippines, was one of the first local NGOs to arrive at the scene.  They have been working closely with Dr Theresa Carino, who happened to be in the Philippines right after the Typhoon and witnessed firsthand the suffering.  Through Dr Carino, we have established the liaison necessary for Kaisa to act as Amity’s local partner in delivering relief to the victims. (Make a Donation Here.)

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New Amity teachers’ gallery

Portraits of the teachers who joined the Amity Teachers Project this summer are now found in a picture gallery.