Last night we wet to a screening of a documentary film, ‘The Blood of Yangzhou District,’ about Aids orphans in China. The film won an Oscar for best short documentary on 2006 and tells the story of an impoverished rural village in China where residents sold their blood for money. The needles with which the blood was extracted were not sterilized and soon most of the adults in the village were infected with HIV/Aids. Some of their children were infected at birth and are, sadly, now orphans. When American aid workers arrived in this village they encountered squalid living conditions and people dying without any medical help at all. It was mostly children who were left and no one wanted to care for them because they have Aids.

It was heartbreaking to see these stories and to see the truly distressing conditions in which these people live. Although the Chinese government now provides medicine so that these children may become healthy and live normal lives there was still no one to care for them properly and to oversee their medical regimen until the arrival of the American organization, The Alliance For Children Salvation Association, founded by Dr. Kay Johnson in Boston. They designed a program in which the children were placed in foster families in cities so they might be situated near a hospital should they need help. They are each assigned a health worker to oversee compliance when it comes to taking the regular doses of medication they need to stay healthy. Their lives are vastly improved now from when they were first discovered in their villages, neglected and ill.

The film was presented as part of a fund-raiser for the kids by my daughter’s childhood friend, Eliza Petrow, who was instrumental in designing the program for their care. I felt so proud to know Eliza and to see the way she has grown into such a compassionate, wise and effective advocate for these kids and others. It’s the kind of thing that gives me a great deal of hope for this world. When I was a young woman few people thought of service careers. I’m truly in awe of what so many young people like Eliza and my own daughter, who is a teacher, are accomplishing.

There are so many worthy causes, it’s hard to know sometimes which to give to. I’ve decided to give to the ones that come my way as this has done. 100% of the donations go to helping these children. If you’d like to contribute please go to The Alliance For Children Foundation website. Pretty amazing to look at those smiling little faces.