Wish You Happy Forever: What China's Orphans Taught Me About Moving Mountains Author: Jenny Bowen | Language: English | ISBN:
B00DB32Q32 | Format: EPUB
Wish You Happy Forever: What China's Orphans Taught Me About Moving Mountains Description
Wish You Happy Forever chronicles Half the Sky founder Jenny Bowen's personal and professional journey to transform Chinese orphanages—and the lives of the neglected girls who live in them—from a state of quiet despair to one of vibrant promise.
After reading an article about the thousands of baby girls languishing in Chinese orphanages, Bowen and her husband adopted a little girl from China and brought her home to Los Angeles, not out of a need to build a family but rather a commitment to save one child. A year later, as she watched her new daughter play in the grass with her friends, thriving in an environment where she knew she was loved, Bowen was overcome with a desire to help the children that she could not bring home. That very day she created Half the Sky Foundation, an organization conceived to bring love into the life of every orphan in China and one that has actually managed to fulfill its promise.
In Wish You Happy Forever, a fish out of water tale like no other, Bowen relates her struggle to bring the concept of "child nurture and responsive care" to bemused Chinese bureaucrats and how she's actually succeeding. Five years after Half the Sky's first orphanage program opened, government officials began to mention child welfare and nurturing care in public speeches. And, in 2011, at China's Great Hall of the People, Half the Sky and its government partners celebrated the launch of The Rainbow Program, a groundbreaking initiative to change the face of orphan care by training every child welfare worker in the country. Thanks to Bowen's relentless perseverance through heartbreak and a dose of humor, Half the Sky's goal to bring love the lives of forgotten children comes ever closer.
- File Size: 4203 KB
- Print Length: 341 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0062192000
- Publisher: HarperOne (March 11, 2014)
- Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00DB32Q32
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,644 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Parenting & Relationships > Adoption - #3
in Books > Parenting & Relationships > Adoption - #4
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Children's Studies
- #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Parenting & Relationships > Adoption - #3
in Books > Parenting & Relationships > Adoption - #4
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Children's Studies
I am a supporter of Half the Sky and have met Jenny once, so of course I got the book the day it came out. I loved it.
If you care about Half the Sky and the care of orphans in China, then you'll definitely want to read this book as it vividly portrays how orphan care has improved over the last 15 years largely due to Half the Sky. Even you never heard of Half the Sky and have no particular interest in China, you may still love this book is well written and gripping as it vividly portrays how a dedicated person with a vision (and lots of help) can change (part of) the world. It's a fascinating and inspiring story that reads like a great novel.
In case you have heard of Nicholas Kristof's Half the Sky organization, there is no connection. This book is about the other (the first) half of the sky!
By Harvey Motulsky
I first met Jenny Bowen five years ago and as she was giving me a little history of Half the Sky Foundation, she asked me to, “…imagine a couple of women from Japan turning up in Washington and telling the office of Health and Human Services that the way America was taking care of its orphans was all wrong.” That’s the journey Jenny and her team has been on in China for the last 14 years. When she began her quest, China was doing almost everything wrong for its orphans. Neither an expert in child welfare or institutional care, Jenny researched everything she could about the horribly debilitating effects of neglect. She met experts, some of whom immediately understood her vision and offered their support. When she traveled to China to see what could be done, in a cosmic turn of karma, Jenny met Zhang Zhirong, the woman who would become her guide, mentor, and partner. Together they took the first steps towards improving the lives of all of China’s orphans forever.
Jenny’s highly readable and engaging memoir is one of those rare opportunities to get an insider’s glimpse of what it takes to change the world. (Hint: you won’t do it alone and you have to be willing to give yourself to your cause unconditionally.) This book takes us from the moment of Jenny’s inspiration, through the formation of Half the Sky Foundation, an organization that has touched the lives of over 100,000 children, and up to the present day. Half the Sky’s work in China is far from finished and it won’t be done until all orphaned children know the love of family.
By Mike N
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