Do you remember Macron?

Some time ago, we received a letter of help for Macron from the Emanuel Children's Home Foundation (USA) and Shining Souls Charity Organization (USA) to Zhangjian Ichthyosis Care Center. Macron, a two-year-old boy with severe ichthyosis. After deciding to rescue Macron, we learned more about the orphanage and full-time volunteer Maria.

Haiti is one of the poorest and war-torn countries in the world, with more than half of the population living in poverty or even extreme poverty. The orphanage in a small town in Haiti is remote. And precisely in the orphanage in the corner of the town, Maria provided a warm home for 38 children.

Despite the lack of funds and living in poverty, Maria has continued to provide lessons for the children to educate them, and has taught them English, Spanish, music and maths. Although they are deficient in material things, their spiritual world is very rich. They give full play to their imagination, make kites by themselves, weave sticks and twigs together to jump rope, and they will generously share a small amount of food with their companions. Perhaps it is because they have so little that they are easily satisfied.

"They are the most gentle and fun children", this is Maria's evaluation of the children. As the great writer Tagore said, "Children love life, and this is their first love".

During the communication with Maria, we learned that the problem of water use in the orphanage was a big difficulty. At first, they had to go to a distant place to fetch water. Later, Pierre, the dean of the orphanage, built a well and installed a water pump, so that the water was convenient a lot. However, the water drawn from the well is turbid, and in addition to the impurities visible to the naked eye, there are many viruses and bacteria, so the children in the orphanage often suffer from typhoid fever and some skin diseases, and their physique is weak.

After learning about these situations, Zhangjian Ichthyosis Care Center wanted to help other children in the orphanage in addition to helping Macron, so we organized a donation activity with volunteers. On the one hand, it raised funds to purchase water purification filters for the orphanage through charity T-shirt sales, so as to improve the water environment; Warm and have a happier childhood.

As soon as the donation activity was sent to our volunteer group, everyone responded enthusiastically. In just a few days, we raised sufficient funds to purchase water purifiers. The volunteers and our colleagues also sent us a lot of clothes. Looking at the increasing number of clothes every day, we are very happy, although we and the volunteers are in different cities, and Haiti and we are also separated by oceans, but love has no distance.

Our volunteers wrapped these gifts with Chinese-style gift paper, including lanterns, paper cuttings, and especially cute cartoon face masks. We also prepared a lot of greeting cards. Maria said that the children especially wanted to receive greeting cards written in Chinese, so each of our volunteers wrote blessings in Chinese for the children in the orphanage, and some volunteers wrote ancient poems on the greeting cards to express their blessings.

If the delivery goes well, these donated gifts will arrive at the orphanage in the Spring Festival of 2022, so that the children can also feel the blessings from China when we celebrate the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger!