This article appeared in the Xinhua Newspaper in June, 2007. It is the story of Helen and Zhang Ge and it answers the questions that people have about what inspires us to do this work and why the organization is named "The Five Project".
A Girl with Autism from Nanjing Changes the Life Choices of an American Academic, Under an Unchanging Love that for 15 Years, Cuts Across International Boundaries
南京一位孤独症女孩，改变了美国一位女博士的人生选择，而恒久不变的是—--15年，跨越国界的爱
http://xh.xhby.net/html/2007-06/25/content_5952142.htm
(Xinhua Newspaper)
June 24 (2007), 9:00 a.m., Nanjing Brain Hospital Meeting Room
The brown haired, blue eyed Assistant Professor of Special Education at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Dr. Helen McCabe (Meng Aining is her Chinese name and is used throughout the article), speaking in fluent Chinese, announced to 93 children with autism and their parents from Anhui, Hubei, and Jiangsu Provinces, "In the United States, we have just registered a non-profit organization to help autism families. Today, we hold a ceremony for the founding of "The Five Project", and to speak to everyone about "Autism in Adolescents." "The Five Project" is the name of our organization; it is not a reference to five projects. Why do we use a number to name our organization?" Her left hand points to a girl wearing a black t-shirt who is seated in the third row. "Because of Nanjing's Zhang Ge. Because she likes (the number) FIVE."
The Story of Zhang Ge
In 1992, Helen McCabe, a graduate of an East Asian Studies department of an American college, had a fervent interest in Chinese culture, and came to the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies to begin a year of study.
For a while, she had joined the American volunteer organization "Big Brother, Big Sister"; during her college days she helped 3 children with cognitive disabilities. Upon coming to Nanjing, she thought of continuing her volunteer work, even taking the initiative to call the Nanjing Amity Foundation and ask to become a volunteer for families of children with intellectual disabilities. The Amity Foundation contacted the Nanjing Brain Hospital. The Hospital suggested that she work with Zhang Ge. When the then-21-year-old met the 8-year-old Zhang Ge, she was immediately attracted to the “girl who is developmentally delayed, yet a genius”.
Zhang Ge who, as soon as she sees a Chinese character, can tell you what page it's on in the dictionary, had a severe case of autism. She could speak, but she could not have a conversation. She could move, but she had limited self care skills. She could play, but she could not think deeply . . . this was the first time Helen had become acquainted with a child with autism, and it amazed her; she looked with empathetic eyes on Zhang Ge's mother and father, an ordinary working class husband and wife, quietly telling her, "autism is a difficult, worldwide problem that medicine can't cure, the only choice we now have is to have the family engage in rehabilitation training, and the family cannot stop doing this for the rest of the person's life." Upon hearing this, Helen hugged Zhang Ge, and used her (foreign) accented Mandarin to announce, "I and all of you will do this together."
Sharing the Grief
From that point on, every week, when she had a day off, she would spend time with Zhang Ge, together with Zhang Ge's parents doing the rehabilitative exercises to help Zhang Ge.
Children with autism have difficulty with receiving and remembering stimuli that fall outside what interests them. It is sometimes only through several months of endless repetition that they then might impart to the child a little bit of knowledge. As she gradually became a part of Zhang Ge's family, she was time and again moved by the selfless love of Zhang Ge's parents, and was determined she would learn skills, determined to solve their difficult problem.
Children with autism (often) cannot communicate through language. If you want to train Zhang Ge to say the two words, "drink water," you need a lot of patience, by slowly breaking through the child's behavioral obstacles. Three months later, at a time when Zhang Ge could point to a teacup to indicate that she wanted water to drink, Helen and Zhang Ge's mother Wu Suxing embraced and cried.
After Zhang Ge tested into the Gulou Training School (school for children with developmental disabilities), Helen would pick Zhang Ge up from class whenever she had the time, and, more importantly, trained Zhang Ge to pay for her bus ride. After less than a semester, Zhang Ge could get on the bus and pay for her fare herself. Slowly, Zhang Ge developed a deeply felt reliance on Helen--she liked Helen's eyes, her curly hair, and chocolate flavored drinks. At school, she could not learn any manual skills but she learned them as soon as Helen taught her. Zhang Ge's overall behavior gradually improved, making (Helen) see the importance of the family rehabilitation exercises, and let her see a glimpse of the treatment for autism.
An Unchanging Promise
After a year flew by, she wanted to return to the United States to enroll in a three year Masters degree program in East Asian Studies. As she said goodbye to them, she said, "Every year I will come to see Zhang Ge once. For these three yers I will entrust other volunteers to "relay" (volunteer with Zhang Ge).
In the United States, Helen's heart was always pulled toward Zhang Ge in Nanjing. Through the entire process of graduate study, she wrote letters, and called international long distance. Outside of class, Helen took the initiative to contact organizations for children with autism in the United States. As soon as she had new information about treatments, she immediately told Zhang Ge's parents. Soon, she became a volunteer for American children with autism.
American children with autism enjoy the right to a lifetime of free medicine, rehabilitation, and education. In China, these types of institutions for people with disabilities are rather incomplete, with the burden of the fees being largely borne by the families themselves, increasing the burden that dually taxes their energy and their finances, which leads many families to end up with no other option than to give up. This huge difference made her realize that she wanted to help more Chinese (children like) Zhang Ge, and bring hope to other Chinese families of children with autism.
In 1996, with her Masters Degree in hand, she quickly took an opportunity to work in Beijing for a year. She used the vacations, with Zhang Ge's parents' home as a base, to carry out a month of research on families with children with autism in the surrounding areas (of Nanjing). She discovered that the majority of the families either didn't know about or weren't able to do the lifelong rehabilitation exercises, adding to the severity of the children's condition.
"This is a treatment that doesn't cost any money, more Chinese families with children with autism should have the chance to grasp this method, and to find hope from Zhang Ge herself." Without realizing it, Helen had become an explorer and a practitioner in the treatment of autism.
Love’s Extension
At the end of 1997, Helen made an unexpected decision, but again received the support of her entire family when she decided to abandon her East Asian Studies major, and pursue a seven-year doctoral course in Special Education at Indiana University, primarily researching early interventions for children with autism.
She has supported the Su Xing Family Resources Center web site created by Zhang Ge's parents, providing for the site translations of the latest information from abroad, and explaining and answering subject matter questions submitted by visitors to the site.
She encourages children with autism to enter into society through volunteer work and to develop mastery of life skills. In 1998, she flew back to Nanjing specifically to help Zhang Ge find a job. As of today, Zhang Ge is already providing service working at a neighborhood library/reading room, breaking through the medical conclusion that children with autism "cannot work in their lifetimes." In 2002, Helen was a teacher-trainer at the Beijing Stars and Rain Education Institute for Autism; in 2003, she conducted a lecture for the Beijing Association for the Rehabilitation of Autistic Children (BARAC). From 2000 to 2004, at the Nanjing Child Mental Health Research Center, she continuously conducted trainings for heads of families with autism, who came from all parts of China.
Early this year, together with her husband and her sister, she registered in the State of Massachusetts a non-profit organization---"The Five Project", in order to provide even more Chinese people with autism the opportunity for education, treatment, and employment.
Inspired by Helen, Zhang Ge's parents have also joined the ranks of volunteers. Besides their web site to support families with autism, they have also gone to Jiangxi, Anhui, and Guangxi, etc. to speak in person, to share their skills in rehabilitation exercises. The couple said, "Those who help others help themselves, Helen will forever be our entire family's mental support."
As soon as Helen heard this, she said, "no", and corrected them: "I only have a small amount of ability and power to do things; only if more and more volunteers unite, will we then defeat autism. All my gratitude goes to Nanjing, and to Zhang Ge, as she has changed me, making my life happy and meaningful."
Indeed, love is warm and can be reciprocated. We hope that, with Nanjing as the starting point, this kind of love’s cycle will increase and last forever.
Written by this newspaper’s reporter, Lin Pei
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In May 2009 FIVE volunteers from Nanjing (both Chinese and American) joined FIVE's peer and family support group for a fun day in the countryside. This article appeared in the Yangtse Evening News (Yangzi Wanbao). http://epaper.yangtse.com/yzwb/2009-05/25/content_12723181.htm Or you can get a PDF version of this article at http://epaper.yangtse.com/images/2009-05/25/1243187585781YZA07525C.pdf
Below is a translation of the article that appeared in May 25, 2009’s Yangtse Evening News. The article was well-written by reporters and a photographer who clearly care about helping people with disabilities. However, there are a few mistakes which might cause confusion to the reader. In the translation, the corrections or clarifications are included in [brackets].
身有残疾，更需要被爱包围; 推着脑瘫儿爬山郊游 -- 南京外籍学子昨非到南京做善事，组织20各残而家庭牵手看世界
When someone has a disability, they need even more to be surrounded by love
Helping a young man with cerebral palsy on a hiking outing
-- Nanjing University foreign students flew to Nanjing yesterday to do charitable work, organizing 20 families of people with disabilities to go hand in hand to see the world
Karen [and Helen] McCabe is an American who can speak a mouthful of fluent Chinese. In 1992 she graduated from Nanjing University [Helen studied at the Johns Hopkins University/Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American studies from 1992-1993.] and returned to the United States to work, but in Nanjing while she [Helen] was studying she developed an activity that she has persisted in ever since. This activity is organizing a group of people with disabilities in Nanjing to go out of their homes into the community together to see the world. [In 1992 Helen began volunteering to help one young girl with autism. Over the past 17 years she has helped hundreds more. Karen joined her later in helping people with disabilities in China. The “group” is one of The Five Project’s support groups which Karen and Helen started in January 2008.] Yesterday Karen and her sister rented a big tourist bus and went with volunteers from Nanjing University, volunteers from Nanjing and 20 families from Xuanwu District who have children with disabilities to the countryside of Tangshan [outskirts of Nanjing] to experience rural life. Together the Chinese and foreign volunteers and the people with disabilities hiked in the mountains, went fishing, picked bamboo leaves, and played games; it was really heartwarming.
Even if it means falling in the river, parents want to make their children happy
Every family with a child who has a disability has a story/situation that moves people. On this day, this reporter noticed a mother and son, Xin Chen, who is 23 years old this year; he was born with cerebral palsy. Xin’s mother told the reporter: “Now it’s much better; through constant exercise for recovery, he can already walk by himself. When I go to work and leave him alone in the house, I’m much more at ease.” In fact, the scope of where Xin can walk is limited to flat pavements. While walking towards the pond to go fishing, Xin’s mother suddenly stopped and turned to the people behind her, saying “below is a steep slope, don’t go down”. But about 10 minutes later, this reporter discovered that Xin’s mother was holding him on her back, staggering a little to cross a small ditch. This sight stopped cold all the people around, everyone immediately ran over to help; Xin’s mother said that originally she didn’t want to let Xin Chen go down (the steep slope to the pond), but Xin Chen said: “Mom, it’s a rare chance that I came here, let me go down to look at the fish pond.” Xin’s mother told this reporter that she told her son that even if Mom had to fall into the river, she was going take him down no matter what! While she was speaking Xin’s mom’s hand never left her son. Xin’s mother said that for other people, a mother’s love is letting the child leave her and become an independent person；for herself, it is to let her son never leave her and to make his life a little happier.
For people without disabilities, going up a mountain is easy, going down is hard. However, for Xin Chen’s mother it is actually hard to go down and going up is even harder! Going back up, Xin’s mother walked behind him with her hands firmly on his waist. The most challenging part was the little hill, from behind she was pushing her son up the hill and it seemed that she didn’t have enough strength; then a group of volunteers went up to Xin Chen to help. Xin’s mother was yelling to tell the others not to fall down, but she fell down. She made an instinctive reaction: she fell down before her son, holding her son’s waist and keeping her body beneath his to protect him. Meanwhile she kept saying “don’t hurt his waist”. This “peng” sound [the mother’s words] hit the others’ hearts.
Love and warmth can be felt even from a leaf [Love/warmth is everywhere]
Yesterday, Karen told the reporter that a month ago she asked her “fellow Americans” at Nanjing University to come to Tang Mountain, and [a mother in the group] specifically found a little lake with bamboo leaves, and she [the mother] asked the local farmers to leave a little bit for them to pick. Yesterday afternoon, Karen and Helen also brought everybody together to enjoy the local farmers’ food. During the countryside lunch, there was nonstop singing and chatting, whether it was a child with a disability who couldn’t move or speak clearly, or a volunteer from another country, everyone was laughing sweetly. It can really be said that “love and warmth can be felt even from a leaf”.
Karen told this reporter that, when she [and her sister] organized this project, it was because they had met a girl with autism in Nanjing, Zhang Ge, who especially likes the number “5”; therefore they call their own project/organization “The Five Project”. The main goal of this project is to support and offer employment, educational and community activities for people with disabilities. These few years, she [they] comes to Nanjing two times a year, and each time they organize 20 families (for a variety of activities). Also, she pays the costs of these activities herself. [Although Karen and Helen do pay a portion of the costs from their own money, many of the costs are supported through donations made to The Five Project.]
(Written by) Sun Yanyan, Zhang Xue, Wujun
A Girl with Autism from Nanjing Changes the Life Choices of an American Academic, Under an Unchanging Love that for 15 Years, Cuts Across International Boundaries
南京一位孤独症女孩，改变了美国一位女博士的人生选择，而恒久不变的是—--15年，跨越国界的爱
http://xh.xhby.net/html/2007-06/25/content_5952142.htm
(Xinhua Newspaper)
June 24 (2007), 9:00 a.m., Nanjing Brain Hospital Meeting Room
The brown haired, blue eyed Assistant Professor of Special Education at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Dr. Helen McCabe (Meng Aining is her Chinese name and is used throughout the article), speaking in fluent Chinese, announced to 93 children with autism and their parents from Anhui, Hubei, and Jiangsu Provinces, "In the United States, we have just registered a non-profit organization to help autism families. Today, we hold a ceremony for the founding of "The Five Project", and to speak to everyone about "Autism in Adolescents." "The Five Project" is the name of our organization; it is not a reference to five projects. Why do we use a number to name our organization?" Her left hand points to a girl wearing a black t-shirt who is seated in the third row. "Because of Nanjing's Zhang Ge. Because she likes (the number) FIVE."
The Story of Zhang Ge
In 1992, Helen McCabe, a graduate of an East Asian Studies department of an American college, had a fervent interest in Chinese culture, and came to the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies to begin a year of study.
For a while, she had joined the American volunteer organization "Big Brother, Big Sister"; during her college days she helped 3 children with cognitive disabilities. Upon coming to Nanjing, she thought of continuing her volunteer work, even taking the initiative to call the Nanjing Amity Foundation and ask to become a volunteer for families of children with intellectual disabilities. The Amity Foundation contacted the Nanjing Brain Hospital. The Hospital suggested that she work with Zhang Ge. When the then-21-year-old met the 8-year-old Zhang Ge, she was immediately attracted to the “girl who is developmentally delayed, yet a genius”.
Zhang Ge who, as soon as she sees a Chinese character, can tell you what page it's on in the dictionary, had a severe case of autism. She could speak, but she could not have a conversation. She could move, but she had limited self care skills. She could play, but she could not think deeply . . . this was the first time Helen had become acquainted with a child with autism, and it amazed her; she looked with empathetic eyes on Zhang Ge's mother and father, an ordinary working class husband and wife, quietly telling her, "autism is a difficult, worldwide problem that medicine can't cure, the only choice we now have is to have the family engage in rehabilitation training, and the family cannot stop doing this for the rest of the person's life." Upon hearing this, Helen hugged Zhang Ge, and used her (foreign) accented Mandarin to announce, "I and all of you will do this together."
Sharing the Grief
From that point on, every week, when she had a day off, she would spend time with Zhang Ge, together with Zhang Ge's parents doing the rehabilitative exercises to help Zhang Ge.
Children with autism have difficulty with receiving and remembering stimuli that fall outside what interests them. It is sometimes only through several months of endless repetition that they then might impart to the child a little bit of knowledge. As she gradually became a part of Zhang Ge's family, she was time and again moved by the selfless love of Zhang Ge's parents, and was determined she would learn skills, determined to solve their difficult problem.
Children with autism (often) cannot communicate through language. If you want to train Zhang Ge to say the two words, "drink water," you need a lot of patience, by slowly breaking through the child's behavioral obstacles. Three months later, at a time when Zhang Ge could point to a teacup to indicate that she wanted water to drink, Helen and Zhang Ge's mother Wu Suxing embraced and cried.
After Zhang Ge tested into the Gulou Training School (school for children with developmental disabilities), Helen would pick Zhang Ge up from class whenever she had the time, and, more importantly, trained Zhang Ge to pay for her bus ride. After less than a semester, Zhang Ge could get on the bus and pay for her fare herself. Slowly, Zhang Ge developed a deeply felt reliance on Helen--she liked Helen's eyes, her curly hair, and chocolate flavored drinks. At school, she could not learn any manual skills but she learned them as soon as Helen taught her. Zhang Ge's overall behavior gradually improved, making (Helen) see the importance of the family rehabilitation exercises, and let her see a glimpse of the treatment for autism.
An Unchanging Promise
After a year flew by, she wanted to return to the United States to enroll in a three year Masters degree program in East Asian Studies. As she said goodbye to them, she said, "Every year I will come to see Zhang Ge once. For these three yers I will entrust other volunteers to "relay" (volunteer with Zhang Ge).
In the United States, Helen's heart was always pulled toward Zhang Ge in Nanjing. Through the entire process of graduate study, she wrote letters, and called international long distance. Outside of class, Helen took the initiative to contact organizations for children with autism in the United States. As soon as she had new information about treatments, she immediately told Zhang Ge's parents. Soon, she became a volunteer for American children with autism.
American children with autism enjoy the right to a lifetime of free medicine, rehabilitation, and education. In China, these types of institutions for people with disabilities are rather incomplete, with the burden of the fees being largely borne by the families themselves, increasing the burden that dually taxes their energy and their finances, which leads many families to end up with no other option than to give up. This huge difference made her realize that she wanted to help more Chinese (children like) Zhang Ge, and bring hope to other Chinese families of children with autism.
In 1996, with her Masters Degree in hand, she quickly took an opportunity to work in Beijing for a year. She used the vacations, with Zhang Ge's parents' home as a base, to carry out a month of research on families with children with autism in the surrounding areas (of Nanjing). She discovered that the majority of the families either didn't know about or weren't able to do the lifelong rehabilitation exercises, adding to the severity of the children's condition.
"This is a treatment that doesn't cost any money, more Chinese families with children with autism should have the chance to grasp this method, and to find hope from Zhang Ge herself." Without realizing it, Helen had become an explorer and a practitioner in the treatment of autism.
Love’s Extension
At the end of 1997, Helen made an unexpected decision, but again received the support of her entire family when she decided to abandon her East Asian Studies major, and pursue a seven-year doctoral course in Special Education at Indiana University, primarily researching early interventions for children with autism.
She has supported the Su Xing Family Resources Center web site created by Zhang Ge's parents, providing for the site translations of the latest information from abroad, and explaining and answering subject matter questions submitted by visitors to the site.
She encourages children with autism to enter into society through volunteer work and to develop mastery of life skills. In 1998, she flew back to Nanjing specifically to help Zhang Ge find a job. As of today, Zhang Ge is already providing service working at a neighborhood library/reading room, breaking through the medical conclusion that children with autism "cannot work in their lifetimes." In 2002, Helen was a teacher-trainer at the Beijing Stars and Rain Education Institute for Autism; in 2003, she conducted a lecture for the Beijing Association for the Rehabilitation of Autistic Children (BARAC). From 2000 to 2004, at the Nanjing Child Mental Health Research Center, she continuously conducted trainings for heads of families with autism, who came from all parts of China.
Early this year, together with her husband and her sister, she registered in the State of Massachusetts a non-profit organization---"The Five Project", in order to provide even more Chinese people with autism the opportunity for education, treatment, and employment.
Inspired by Helen, Zhang Ge's parents have also joined the ranks of volunteers. Besides their web site to support families with autism, they have also gone to Jiangxi, Anhui, and Guangxi, etc. to speak in person, to share their skills in rehabilitation exercises. The couple said, "Those who help others help themselves, Helen will forever be our entire family's mental support."
As soon as Helen heard this, she said, "no", and corrected them: "I only have a small amount of ability and power to do things; only if more and more volunteers unite, will we then defeat autism. All my gratitude goes to Nanjing, and to Zhang Ge, as she has changed me, making my life happy and meaningful."
Indeed, love is warm and can be reciprocated. We hope that, with Nanjing as the starting point, this kind of love’s cycle will increase and last forever.
Written by this newspaper’s reporter, Lin Pei
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In May 2009 FIVE volunteers from Nanjing (both Chinese and American) joined FIVE's peer and family support group for a fun day in the countryside. This article appeared in the Yangtse Evening News (Yangzi Wanbao). http://epaper.yangtse.com/yzwb/2009-05/25/content_12723181.htm Or you can get a PDF version of this article at http://epaper.yangtse.com/images/2009-05/25/1243187585781YZA07525C.pdf
Below is a translation of the article that appeared in May 25, 2009’s Yangtse Evening News. The article was well-written by reporters and a photographer who clearly care about helping people with disabilities. However, there are a few mistakes which might cause confusion to the reader. In the translation, the corrections or clarifications are included in [brackets].
身有残疾，更需要被爱包围; 推着脑瘫儿爬山郊游 -- 南京外籍学子昨非到南京做善事，组织20各残而家庭牵手看世界
When someone has a disability, they need even more to be surrounded by love
Helping a young man with cerebral palsy on a hiking outing
-- Nanjing University foreign students flew to Nanjing yesterday to do charitable work, organizing 20 families of people with disabilities to go hand in hand to see the world
Karen [and Helen] McCabe is an American who can speak a mouthful of fluent Chinese. In 1992 she graduated from Nanjing University [Helen studied at the Johns Hopkins University/Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American studies from 1992-1993.] and returned to the United States to work, but in Nanjing while she [Helen] was studying she developed an activity that she has persisted in ever since. This activity is organizing a group of people with disabilities in Nanjing to go out of their homes into the community together to see the world. [In 1992 Helen began volunteering to help one young girl with autism. Over the past 17 years she has helped hundreds more. Karen joined her later in helping people with disabilities in China. The “group” is one of The Five Project’s support groups which Karen and Helen started in January 2008.] Yesterday Karen and her sister rented a big tourist bus and went with volunteers from Nanjing University, volunteers from Nanjing and 20 families from Xuanwu District who have children with disabilities to the countryside of Tangshan [outskirts of Nanjing] to experience rural life. Together the Chinese and foreign volunteers and the people with disabilities hiked in the mountains, went fishing, picked bamboo leaves, and played games; it was really heartwarming.
Even if it means falling in the river, parents want to make their children happy
Every family with a child who has a disability has a story/situation that moves people. On this day, this reporter noticed a mother and son, Xin Chen, who is 23 years old this year; he was born with cerebral palsy. Xin’s mother told the reporter: “Now it’s much better; through constant exercise for recovery, he can already walk by himself. When I go to work and leave him alone in the house, I’m much more at ease.” In fact, the scope of where Xin can walk is limited to flat pavements. While walking towards the pond to go fishing, Xin’s mother suddenly stopped and turned to the people behind her, saying “below is a steep slope, don’t go down”. But about 10 minutes later, this reporter discovered that Xin’s mother was holding him on her back, staggering a little to cross a small ditch. This sight stopped cold all the people around, everyone immediately ran over to help; Xin’s mother said that originally she didn’t want to let Xin Chen go down (the steep slope to the pond), but Xin Chen said: “Mom, it’s a rare chance that I came here, let me go down to look at the fish pond.” Xin’s mother told this reporter that she told her son that even if Mom had to fall into the river, she was going take him down no matter what! While she was speaking Xin’s mom’s hand never left her son. Xin’s mother said that for other people, a mother’s love is letting the child leave her and become an independent person；for herself, it is to let her son never leave her and to make his life a little happier.
For people without disabilities, going up a mountain is easy, going down is hard. However, for Xin Chen’s mother it is actually hard to go down and going up is even harder! Going back up, Xin’s mother walked behind him with her hands firmly on his waist. The most challenging part was the little hill, from behind she was pushing her son up the hill and it seemed that she didn’t have enough strength; then a group of volunteers went up to Xin Chen to help. Xin’s mother was yelling to tell the others not to fall down, but she fell down. She made an instinctive reaction: she fell down before her son, holding her son’s waist and keeping her body beneath his to protect him. Meanwhile she kept saying “don’t hurt his waist”. This “peng” sound [the mother’s words] hit the others’ hearts.
Love and warmth can be felt even from a leaf [Love/warmth is everywhere]
Yesterday, Karen told the reporter that a month ago she asked her “fellow Americans” at Nanjing University to come to Tang Mountain, and [a mother in the group] specifically found a little lake with bamboo leaves, and she [the mother] asked the local farmers to leave a little bit for them to pick. Yesterday afternoon, Karen and Helen also brought everybody together to enjoy the local farmers’ food. During the countryside lunch, there was nonstop singing and chatting, whether it was a child with a disability who couldn’t move or speak clearly, or a volunteer from another country, everyone was laughing sweetly. It can really be said that “love and warmth can be felt even from a leaf”.
Karen told this reporter that, when she [and her sister] organized this project, it was because they had met a girl with autism in Nanjing, Zhang Ge, who especially likes the number “5”; therefore they call their own project/organization “The Five Project”. The main goal of this project is to support and offer employment, educational and community activities for people with disabilities. These few years, she [they] comes to Nanjing two times a year, and each time they organize 20 families (for a variety of activities). Also, she pays the costs of these activities herself. [Although Karen and Helen do pay a portion of the costs from their own money, many of the costs are supported through donations made to The Five Project.]
(Written by) Sun Yanyan, Zhang Xue, Wujun
