little red scarf brochure
DESCRIPTION
About the Little Red Scarf ProgramTRANSCRIPT
www.littleredscarf.org
www.chaofoundation.org
2 Little Red Scarf
What We Do
The Little Red Scarf provides financial and social support for the treatment of poor rural children with congenital heart disease.
IntroDuctIon
The Little Red Scarf currently operates in Gansu Province, China, and finances
surgeries and other medical treatment for children with congenital heart disease
who belong to low-income families from rural areas of Gansu. Additionally, local
Little Red Scarf staff and volunteers provide social and emotional support to
children and their families during their hospital stay. The Little Red Scarf is also
bringing the model it has developed in Gansu to a new project in Vietnam.
Why Gansu? Congenital heart disease in rural Gansu is highly prevalent, but most children are unable to receive treatment. As many as one in 125 children may be born with congenital heart disease.
What is Congenital Heart Disease? Congenital heart disease is a heart defect that develops before birth. In the patients we serve, this is most often a hole in the wall between the wall that separates both sides of the heart. Because of this hole, the heart has to pump harder than normal to supply the body with the oxygen and nutrients it needs. Defects are multifactorial, caused by a confluence of genetic, environmental, and prenatal factors.
3Introduction
Who We AreThe Little Red Scarf is an alliance of
non-profit organizations and private
individuals dedicated to the support
of poor rural children with congenital
heart disease. It is the result of the
cooperation of three US charities:
the Ping and Amy Chao Family
Foundation, the Chinese Christian
Herald Crusade, and Angel Heart
International. With the support from
the other two charities, the Ping
and Amy Chao Family Foundation
administers the project from its
Beijing, Lanzhou and California offices.
In China, the Little Red Scarf
operations are coordinated by a
dedicated staff of five, together with
interns and numerous volunteers
from Little Red Scarf’s university
partner, Northwest Normal University
(NWNU) in Lanzhou, China. The Little
Red Scarf’s local office in Lanzhou
is located on the NWNU campus.
The Little Red Scarf partners with
the Lanzhou Military District General
Hospital and Lanzhou University 1st
Hospital to provide treatment for
most of the participating children. For
some cases, the Little Red Scarf also
cooperates with the Gansu Province
People’s Hospital in Lanzhou, and with
the Beijing Anzhen Hospital in Beijing.
The Little Red Scarf also has partner-
ships with the Beijing Red Cross
Foundation, Northwest Normal Uni-
versity, and Beijing Normal University.
Additionally, the Little Red Scarf
enlists the grassroots efforts of local
governments, schools, community
members, and families who have
received help in the past.
Surgeries performed with
the help of Little Red Scarf
2008
59 children cured
2009
155 children cured
2010
187 children cured
2011 January
16 children cured
Total number of children cured
of congenital heart disease
417
Average Surgery Cost 25,500 元 (4000 USD)
Average Donation
13,000 元 (2000 USD)
4 Little Red Scarf
MIssIonAt its core, the vision of the Little Red Scarf is to provide an opportunity for underprivileged and disadvantaged children to enjoy a normal and healthy life.
Children who suffer from congenital heart disease begin their lives with a serious
disadvantage. However, the treatment for many forms of congenital heart disease is
often straightforward: one surgery can add many years to a child’s lifetime. Within
China, Gansu Province has an exceptionally high prevalence of congenital heart
disease, and families from Gansu’s rural areas who work Gansu’s infertile land cannot
afford treatment. Children with congenital heart disease most likely will not survive past
the age of 10 without surgery. In response to this overwhelming need, Little Red Scarf
has focused its initial efforts here. The project in Gansu serves as a starting point for
further efforts to address the problem on a larger scale.
Loving ValuesThe Little Red Scarf is dedicated to carrying out its work with a heart of love, care,
and friendship for the children and families that we serve. While the most visible
aspect of our work is providing financial support for medical treatment, the Little
Red Scarf is dedicated to providing holistic social and emotional support to the
children and their families before and long after surgery, until the children grow up.
5Mission
EfficacyThe Little Red Scarf strives to continually gather and analyze objective data on the
outcomes of its current efforts in order to inform its future efforts. Additionally, the
Little Red Scarf takes pains to ensure that its beneficiaries are truly the most in need
so that the resources of its donors can be used most efficiently to maximize benefits.
We guarantee that 100% of the value of the donations we receive go directly to support
the children. Operational costs are separate and covered by the Ping and Amy Chao
Family Foundation.
AccountabilityAs a responsible and accountable organization, the Little Red Scarf keeps records of
all its financial transactions, including cost breakdowns for the treatment of each child.
We make these records easily accessible for donors and the public.
TransparencyThe Little Red Scarf is a pioneer user of the Transparent Fish online platform
( www.toumingyu.org ), another project sponsored by the Ping and Amy Chao Family
Foundation. The Transparent Fish platform aims to give non-profit organizations the
ability to share experiences, stories, and information with each other and the world.
The intent of the platform is to increase transparency for non-profit organizations.
As a pioneer user, Little Red Scarf is a “guinea pig” for the platform developers of
Transparent Fish to improve their design.
To develop a model for effective, accountable, and transparent nonprofit
work in underdeveloped areas. While far from perfect, the Little Red Scarf
is a working laboratory for the development of this model. Very few non-profit
organizations working in underdeveloped areas have the resources to invest in
developing a methodology that works for rural, not urban, East Asia. It is our hope
that the model developed here can be leveraged in other initiatives.
To move society. Congenital heart disease presents a distinct problem with a
relatively distinct solution. Because one donation can make a huge difference
in a child’s life, the project issues a strong call to action, providing a powerful
stimulus for the involvement of individuals and organizations from all levels of
society. Continued involvement will eventually translate into long-lasting involvement
in public service and philanthropy. Our hope is that this impact will extend beyond
congenital heart disease to many other social challenges in the future.
Auxiliary Aims
1
2
6 Little Red Scarf
As described earlier, the Little Red Scarf Alliance provides financial and social
support for the treatment of children with congenital heart disease who live in poor
rural areas. Financial support covers part or all of the costs of the medical care
provided at our partner hospitals in Lanzhou. Based on each family’s need, support
usually covers part or all of a child’s surgical procedures. Social support includes
outreach to impoverished families in the countryside, care and information during a
family’s hospital stay, and follow-up contact and longer-term educational programs
for families after the surgeries. Our programming continues to evolve as we find out
more about our beneficiaries’ needs and challenges.
our ProGrAMHow We Help
7Our Program
Home VisitsAfter being contacted about a potential
Little Red Scarf beneficiary by a local
government, school, or the family itself,
Little Red Scarf staff will make a home
visit to the child’s home in the village.
During the home visit, the staff will
introduce the family to the Little Red
Scarf program. If the family consents,
the home visit is also the main step in
the application process to becoming a
beneficiary of the Little Red Scarf. The
staff will walk the family through the
application forms, and afterwards will
take pictures of the child’s family and
home. The application materials will
later be sent to the Little Red Scarf’s
Beijing Office for evaluation. After the
home visit, the local staff will continue
to keep in touch with the family, helping
to lower the many barriers that might
prevent the child from getting treatment.
Hospital supportWhen a family enters the hospital in
Lanzhou, Little Red Scarf staff will visit
them to welcome, orient, and provide a
friendly, familiar face to them in a new
environment. Staff and student volunteers
visit the hospital daily to check up on the
family’s status and support the family as
the child receives diagnostic tests and
treatment (most often surgery), and as
the child recovers. Volunteers and staff
try their best to make the experience of
the children and their families as smooth
and comfortable as possible. Each family
receives a parting gift of 200 RMB worth
of food as they leave the hospital.
The hospital where children receive
treatment is responsible for the medical
care given. According to the doctors at
the Lanzhou Military District General
Hospital, where most of our children go,
surgeries for common defects have a
99% success rate, success being defined
as the child’s state of health at the time of
discharge from the hospital.
8 Little Red Scarf
FollowupFamilies will receive text messages
over the course of 20 days about post-
surgery care, starting the first day they
return home after surgery. The Little
Red Scarf also tries to collect feedback
about the program as well as follow-up
data from its beneficiaries.
Three months after their surgeries,
children return to the hospital for a
medical followup to review the results
of surgery – the great majority of which
are successful. Little Red Scarf staff
will reunite with the families at the
hospital during their followup visit.
In the summer of 2010, the Little Red
Scarf staff and volunteers held the first
summer camp for its beneficiaries. The
camp lasted two weeks and hosted 15
children. Children took classes, played
games, and climbed a mountain –
something they would never have been
able to do before.
Our follow-up services continue to
evolve as we learn more about our
beneficiaries' needs and desires.
9Our Program
onlinePioneering the Transparent Fish online
platform is an important venture for
the Little Red Scarf. Every workday,
the Little Red Scarf staff create and
update children’s project pages, write
daily hospital update blogs about
the children who are currently in the
hospital, and write daily work blogs.
The symbiosis between the Little Red
Scarf and the Transparent Fish online
platform is a work in progress for
creating a Web 2.0 nonprofit model for
transparency and accountability.
10 Little Red Scarf
The first thing that strikes you when
you see Peng Peng is the size of his
head — unlike most healthy babies
his age, his cheeks lack thick layers
of fat. As a result, his skull case looks
disproportionately large relative to
his face. Indeed, at 11 months old,
his eight-kilogram body is about five
months behind in growth – he still wears
the same shoes he did when he was 5
months old. He hasn't started crawling. I
feel his legs – they are like bags of water,
swollen from the inefficient pumping of
his heart. Because of his heart defect,
Peng Peng needs more calories than a
normal baby – but he has been getting
far fewer.
As a matter of fact, Peng Peng has
never had milk – neither breast milk nor
formula. After he was born, his mother
and father both left home immediately
to work to pay for Peng Peng's medical
fees. His mother never had the chance
to breastfeed him. His parents work in a
sand mine in Xinjiang, under very poor
living conditions. They rarely get the
chance to return home to see their child.
Peng Peng’s grandparents take care
of him. His grandfather shows me the
"mianhuhu" that they feed him every
day – flour mixed with water, with only
a little bit of milk powder mixed in.
Along with noodles, this is all they can
afford to feed him, as real formula is too
expensive. The grandparents now rent
a place by the hospital — they need to
be nearby in order to rush Peng Peng
to the emergency room when he gets
sick, which is often. Just being held, he
is already glistening with sweat, and his
nose is runny. When he gets fevers, they
are hard to bring down.
But the place they rent in Tianzhu
(about 139 km north of Lanzhou) is
not suited to raising a baby with Peng
Peng's condition. It is a shack shared by
nineteen people, with a holey roof that
PEnG芃芃
one surgery, one Life
Blog by Seanan Fong
Stanford University Fall Intern 2010
11Peng
PEnG
his grandparents block up with a plastic
sheet. When it rains, water still falls into
the shack. Outside, the courtyard is
littered with garbage. Coal dust from a
nearby coal yard pollutes the air.
Peng Peng was born with an atrial septal
defect (ASD) and a ventricular septal
defect (VSD), in addition to other defects.
Septal defects are basically holes in
the wall that separate the two sides of
Peng Peng's heart. Because of this hole,
oxygenated blood from the left side of his
heart leaks into the right side of his heart
with every heartbeat.
As a result, his heart pumps less
efficiently than it should, depriving him
of energy and stunting his growth and
development.
Fortunately, children at this age are fairly
resilient. Thanks to the sponsorship
of generous donors, Peng Peng
received surgery for his heart defect
on September 28, 2010. The surgeons
at the Lanzhou Military District General
Hospital patched up the wall between the
two sides of his heart. With the support
of his family, the doctors, nurses, and
the staff of Little Red Scarf, Peng Peng
was ready to go home after a seven-
day recovery in the hospital. Thanks to
sponsors, Peng Peng can enjoy a normal
childhood with a healthy, working heart
— truly a gift that will last a lifetime.
Child's Nickname
Peng Peng 芃芃 (#158)
Birthday
November 4, 2009
Project Page
www.toumingyu.org/project/444/
Date of Hospitalization
Sept. 22 2010 to Oct. 5, 2010
Cost of Surgery
21,958 元 (3350 USD)
Sponsorship Amount
10,000 元 (1500 USD)
Little Red Scarf, USA Office800 High Street, Suite 408
Palo Alto, CA 94301(650) 924-1104
100% of your donation will be used to directly support heart surgeries. We will cover the online transaction fee. All US donors will receive an official tax receipt for their donation. Thank you for helping us provide one surgery, one life.
sponsor a child
Visit www.littleredscarf.org to make a donation or learn more.
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