Because every child, no matter how humble her beginnings, deserves loving care, and a chance at a bright future.

The Year of YanMeng
On Chinese New Year’s Eve, Ren CuiHua, a foster mother in Half the Sky’s Family Village in Nanjing, sat around the dinner table with her family like so many other moms all across China. But why wasn’t the seated family enjoying the fancy cuisine? What were they waiting for? All eyes were turned toward the doorway where CuiHua’s daughter stood and then started to make her way to the table...

Our Story

Holding up Half the Sky
One day an elephant saw a hummingbird lying on its back with its tiny feet up in the air. "What are you doing?" asked the elephant.

The hummingbird replied, "I heard that the sky might fall today, and so I am ready to help hold it up, should it fall."

The elephant laughed cruelly. "Do you really think," he said, "that those tiny feet could help hold up the sky?"

The hummingbird kept his feet up in the air, intent on his purpose, as he replied, "Not alone. But each must do what he can. And this is what I can do."
— A Chinese Folktale

In 1997, Jenny and Richard Bowen adopted their daughter, Maya, a toddler from a welfare institution in southern China. They received a first-hand education in early childhood development and the trauma of institutionalization: she suffered from both physical and cognitive developmental delays. But after just one year of individual attention, love and nurture, Maya was transformed.

How easy it was to make a tremendous difference in the life of one young child! What if you could do the same for the many children in China who languish waiting for families — or those who will never be adopted? That's how Half the Sky Foundation — named for the Chinese adage, "Women hold up half the sky" — was born in 1998.

Half the Sky’s mission — to provide family-like nurturing care in the lives of orphaned children — was clear, but the effectiveness of its first pilot programs, launched in the summer of 2000, was an open question.

Could infants living in institutions thrive under the care of trained, loving nannies working in Half the Sky’s Baby Sisters Infant Nurture Centers as they do in families?

Could children living in institutions and enrolled in Half the Sky’s Little Sisters Preschools become eager, happy learners when nurtured in a stimulating environment under the care of teachers trained to patiently encourage children to make developmental leaps?

Could Half the Sky’s staff develop deep emotional bonds with children living in institutions, the bonds of attachment that are crucial for children’s healthy development?

In the years since Half the Sky’s first pilot programs, those questions have been easily answered over and over again: YES!

Listless babies have learned to coo, to laugh, to cuddle, and to follow the sounds of their nannies’ voices. Withdrawn, sullen preschoolers have learned to draw and plant sunflowers, ride bikes, negotiate with their peers for toys, and greet their teachers with open arms.

Half the Sky’s first two programs were so successful, and so warmly embraced by its Chinese partners, that the Foundation added two more programs to reach children still falling through the cracks.

In 2002, Half the Sky’s Big Sisters Program began providing individualized learning opportunities for older children growing up in Chinese institutions—everything from language classes, computer training, music and art lessons, vocational education, and even college tuition for those who have defied long odds to pursue their higher education dreams.

In 2005, Half the Sky opened its first Family Villages, providing permanent, loving, two-parent homes for children whose physical and developmental challenges will preclude them from being adopted. For the first time children who’d had no other option but to spend their childhoods in institutions, can use the words “mama” and “baba” with pride and love, knowing that finally they have parents they can call their own. 

While developing and expanding its programs, Half the Sky has also been working hard to spread the word throughout China about the importance of nurturing care for orphaned children.

In 2003, Half the Sky celebrated its 5th anniversary by hosting a national conference on nurture and education in China’s welfare institutions in Hefei, Anhui. With support from the Ford Foundation, Half the Sky published For the Children, a teacher and nanny training manual for its signature approach (developed by Chinese and Western educators) to providing high-quality, nurturing care for institutionalized children. For the Children is distributed free-of-charge to welfare institutions across China.

In 2005 Half the Sky was thrilled to be invited to support the Chinese government’s own ambitious, new initiative to expand care for orphaned children to include nurture and individual attention as well as food, shelter, and medical care. Half the Sky has enthusiastically joined the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) to help create new guidelines that will raise the quality of care on a national level.

Since Half the Sky first launched its determined effort to help “hold up the sky”, thousands of children living in Chinese institutions have received the gift of love and nurture.  And that number grows each year. Half the Sky centers now dot the map of China, each one a sign of hope and care for orphaned children.

Half the Sky has accomplished so much because so many have joined in to help. Today Half the Sky’s global community is made up of tens of thousands of generous individuals, corporations, and foundations, each doing their part to hold up the sky.

It is a community of doggedly optimistic hummingbirds who believe that coming together as a community can eventually bring a family’s loving care to all of China’s orphaned children.