The Staff

- October 02, 2019

As the Sparrow Fund website so eloquently states, the purpose of our trip was "to love and serve children, caregivers, and orphanage administrators, seeking to communicate in everything we do that they matter, that they are valuable, and that someone outside themselves is for them".

In that triad, the caregivers and administrators are often overlooked. People mainly focus on the children, but forget the very important role these providers that stand "in the in-between" (between biological and adoptive families) play in the social, emotional, and developmental outcomes of these children.

The Sparrow Fund has worked hard to build long-standing, trusting relationships with the orphanage administrators. Because of that relationship, we were invited in to do training with the staff. The staff is mainly women who do not have high level, formal education, but they work extremely hard, with medical resident training hours (literally q4 overnight call shifts in the orphange). Despite formal training, they crave knowledge and new information that can help them care for these vulnerable children better. Before we even left the US, we had received a list of topics that the staff was hoping to receive more training on. Throughout the week, we touched on a wide array of subjects that covered both medical and developmental issues. We had formal, lecture style trainings as well as hands-on learning in the kids' rooms.

Lecture Time

In some cases, we were even able to see immediate improvement in children from changes occurring in their care based on our education. Our Physical Therapists had two new walkers and two new crawlers by the end of the week! One child who the orphanage staff was concerned had developed Cerebral Palsy was recognized to simply not use one side of his body because his plagiocephaly (flat head) was so bad that he only looked in one direction. He didn't even recognize the other side of his body existed! After some intentional work with him, the nannies, and a good Tortle cap, he's off to a much better start in life! (More to come on the awesome PTs on the trip in a later post.) Most of my time was spent on medical issues with the "doctor", who is a staff member with a little bit of extra training in administering medications and CPR. Everyone was eager to learn.

Tortle Cap in action!

Teaching with the orphanage director and doctor

In addition to training the staff, we wanted to make sure they knew that they were cherished and loved as individuals as well. To do this, we put together some quality time with them. We were able to share the Word, and then offered the opportunity to wash, massage, and manicure their hands. We had the impression this was the first time for many of these women to have someone else pamper them, and the LOVED it. We did this on the second day, and it very obviously broke down barriers.

I would be remiss to not mention how the staff loved on us well too. Every morning we were greeted with hot tea and breakfast treats; not to mention the grocery bags full of snacks they sent back with us to the hotel. The orphanage director and administration staff went to lunch with us each day. And one of the Ayis even invited us to dinner at her house. Her and her husband treated us to the best traditional Chinese Hot-pot (think fondue) and then brought us to a public square were an amazing water and lights show happens every night. They wanted to make sure we truly experience their city and culture, so one of the administrators took her first day-off, after a 12 day stretch workin, to be our tour guide the day before we left to go home. There was obviously a language barrier, but that didn't stop lots of laughing or friendships from developing!