Visit to China

Spreading Harmony in the Far East

By Steve Grant, WMVC Press Officer
29 May 2005

Warrington Male Voice Choir member, Geoff Hopper, has recently returned from a tour of orphanages and foster homes in China.

The trip took representatives of several childcare charities to see what effect their donor’s money is having, to meet the children and their carers, and to make plans for future projects.

Geoff, accompanied his wife Julia on the trip. For Julia, a Director of British Charity: Childhood Friends, this was her eighth visit to China. The couple live in Great Sankey.

Geoff and Julia with young friends.

At home, Geoff is proud to be part of the award winning Warrington Male Voice Choir. He said “Recently we added to our repertoire an arrangement of “Lord, Make Me an Instrument of Thy Peace”. The trip was an opportunity to do what the song says…to bring hope where there is despair, light where there is darkness, and joy where there is sadness”.

Previous funds which have been channelled to China have bought a piano for one of the orphanages, and Geoff and Julia were able to take presents into the orphanages which included mouth organs and tin whistles !.....spreading harmony in more ways than one !

New projects which were approved whilst the team were out in China included:

	A training scheme to teach some older disabled children to knit and sew.
	Art classes for severely disabled children from 7 to 12 years old.
	Regular outings for the children who rarely go outside the orphanage.
	Minor surgery for several of the children.
	Foster care for ore of the children.

The arts classes will be run by a local artist, who adopted a deaf girl from one of the orphanages and taught her to paint. Within a year she was producing high quality paintings which later

gained media interest and won awards. This artist now mainly teaches severely disabled people.

Geoff and Julia would be pleased to hear from anyone who is interested in supporting the projects, whether by one-off donations, monthly sponsorship of foster children, support for the raffling of one of the paintings, or even by going out to China on a two-week working party.

You can contact them on 01925-711621.

100% of all donations goes to the children.

Photographs by Geoff Hopper