Amity Divisions and Programs

During the Amity teacher conference in Nanjing near the end of August, Amity staff shared updates on Amity programs with the Amity teachers.  Mr. Qiu Zhonghui, General Secretary of the Amity Foundation, thanked and welcomed all of the teachers, as well as sharing some general information about Amity’s organization. 

Associate General Secretary, Mr. Zhang Liwei shared a video about Amity and more details of Amity’s goals and work, as well as introducing the staff from various divisions.

Ms. Liu Ruhong, director of the Education Division added information about additional projects in this category, namely the Summer English Program in which volunteer teams of teachers provide an intensive oral English training program for Chinese secondary school teachers of English during the summer holiday and Amity’s training programs for other college staff, teachers and leaders to build local capacity.

Ms. Helen Zhao, deputy director of the Integrated Development Division, which combines the former Medical and Health and Rural Development Divisions, told about this, the largest division in Amity.  Reaching out to the western provinces and regions, this division helps touch and transform the lives of many rural poor.  Through various projects, local people can learn how to develop their own economic base to a level that can provide for their basic family needs, and at the same time protect the environment around them.  Other projects help villagers with provisions to have some basic medical care right in the village through the village doctor and village clinic programs. 

Ms. Lin Wenxin, a staff member from the Blindness Prevention and Special Education Division shared how most of the blindness present in China is preventable and curable because many cases are caused by cataracts.  The problem is that most poor don’t have doctors with the skill to do this surgery nearby and they don’t have the financial means to pay for it.  Amity is helping bring eye surgeons into remote areas to provide cataract surgery for those who need it.  There is a story of three brothers who all had cataracts and had not been able to see each other for years until Amity provided them with the surgery on the same day.  Now they can see each other again.  In addition, Amity is working on the prevention of other causes of blindness and on community based rehabilitation for those whose vision loss is not currently reversible.  The goal in this latter case is to help the individual develop skills that will enable them to earn money for their daily needs and for their families and, at the same time, will enable them to have a new sense of usefulness, purpose and meaning in their lives. 

Mr. Chu Chaoyu from the Social Welfare Division informed the Amity teachers about a number of projects reaching out to orphans in orphanages.  These include retired doctors, teachers, and nurses from the churches visiting regularly and providing extra loving care as grannies to the children, as well as the provision of needed surgeries to correct congenital conditions, the fees needed for children capable of going to public school to do so, and a subsidy for some of the children to live and grow up in the family setting of a loving foster home.

This outline of some of the projects enabled new Amity teachers to learn something more about the breadth of Amity’s work and provided continuing teachers with a current update on some of the work.