Yellow River Charity’s Newsletter and 4th Birthday Celebration

We are about to celebrate the Yellow River Soup Kitchen’s 4th Birthday this week, quite an achievement in itself considering from the outset we were never given any hope of survival here in China past the first few months. To mark our work to date some friends in the UK and China have produced a Yellow River Charity 2010 Calendar, a high quality summary of all our activities over the previous four years along with some stunning photos too.  We have 0% overheads so all of the proceeds will go directly to the people intended as we are a purely voluntary registered NGO, we only have limited stocks and each copy is  ￡3.99 + p&p and can be ordered through our web site.

For more images and info about our 2010 Yellow River Charity Calendar click here

So it seems an appropriate time to send out a brief summary of our activities over this past year or so but there has been so much activity with us continuing to grow organically and expanding our activities at the risk of causing ‘death by newsletter’ it seems difficult to decide what to include and what to leave out. Hence I will try and give you just a brief overview and if you would like to read more you can follow some of the links or watch a couple of our short videos of our more recent projects. To watch a couple of short recent videos, including a video summary of our projects in 2009 click here.

For your convenience below is a brief summary of some of our past work to give you a little insight into what has been keeping us busy these past 4 years.

Some of our achievements to date are :-

* The Yellow River Soup Kitchen has served in excess of 60,000 meals to date and currently serves around 2000 meals per month.
* Through our outreach programme's to poor mountain villages we have delivered aid to over 15,000 people
* We help around 20 homeless people per year find employment.
* In 2006 we ran a summer school and taught 180 school children.
* Oct/Nov ’09 we renovated a village school and then organised the first of an annual sports day for up to 100 village children.
* Weekly offer first aid at the Soup Kitchen and pay for or arrange treatment whenever possible.
* To date we have had a total of over 1300 volunteers come to work with us, purely by word of mouth.
* This year we have assisted in the starting of Soup Kitchens in 3 other cities in China.
* Regularly work with other organizations that find us, from student groups both in China and from the West, international and local NGO’s and large corporations, giving many people the opportunity to try our brand of volunteer work.
* We have helped rehabilitate several street children, some to find work, some to attend school and regularly help them to return to their families.
* During the time of the earthquakes in Sichuan province in May 2008, we mobilized 29 volunteers and 7000 items delivering aid to around 2000 people in Lue Yang. We continue to sponsor 39 school children to attend school in the region.

To watch a short 4 minute video of a summary of our projects in 2009 see below.

Perhaps a turning point for the Soup Kitchen was as at the time of the devastation of the earthquakes in Sichuan province in May 2008 a tragic event which resulted in the deaths of over 70,000 and the wrecking of millions of lives. We received permission from the government to attend the region to offer our services as we were already well established in the delivery of aid to outreach locations. Within the space of a week we gathered together around 7000 items of aid and along with 29 volunteers delivered the items to around 2000 people. We later continued to sponsor 39 school children attend school there. It was perhaps at this point that people began to realise what we were capable of as an organisation having been able to deliver so much aid yet to mobilise so quickly too.

Recent Projects - Oct/Nov/Dec ‘09

Hu Jia Yao Village School Projects - October & November 2009

We have just completed two projects in Lan Tian in a poor rural mountain village. The local village school had up to 50 children age 6-9 with just one teacher all day everyday. The first of the projects was over two days when we repaired the school. We provided electricity to the classroom and lighting as there was none, 2 heaters and enough coal for the winter, notebooks and pens etc and a library, put glass in all the windows and then painted the classroom. In the evening we put on an outside film for all the village and lastly on the Sunday after completing all the repairs to the school we distributed clothing to the children.

Before After

Two weekends later we returned and organised a sports day and fair for the 80-100 children of the village, the first sports day that the children had ever took part in. We took 29 & 33 volunteers for the two events and it was an amazing two weekends for everybody involved and probably the best projects we have run to date.

To watch the short video of the weekend we spent with the children repairing the school click here.

Street Distribution of Winter Quilts, Overcoats & Long johns Nov & Dec ‘09

Each winter we take to the streets of Xi'an and distribute new quilts, overcoats and long johns to the homeless as they sleep. Finding them on the streets at night may be a much more difficult and time consuming way to distribute, each night teams were out until 2am and 1am respectively, but we can learn so much in the process. Where the homeless sleep, what conditions they live in, what problems they may be facing that we weren't aware of, if there are any new people that we are currently not serving at our Soup Kitchen, and even how many people that we do serve are genuinely homeless and are living on the streets. We find the number is around 95% of the people we serve are genuinely on the streets which is a great experience for all of our volunteers to see for themselves as there is still a lot of doubt and cynicism amongst the general population that the homeless are actually wealthy people who don't need help.

To watch the 2 minute video of us distributing around the streets at night click here.

Due to the natural spreading of our actions we have also been able to assist groups in 3 other major cities in China start Soup Kitchens of their own, the latest of which is a University in Zhuhai, southern China.

In addition to our “day job” there has been the bizarre and the surreal, perhaps due to us being considered the first Soup Kitchen in China, the nature of our work or the philosophy we have adopted we seem to have created a fair bit of interest in our activities, both within China and from abroad. Resulting in the last year and a half two more documentaries being made about our organisation, corporate events with the likes of Coca Cola China/Swire Group as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility program, an interview with Harvard Business Review and more recently an invitation to be a spotlight speaker for The Windsor Leadership Trust in Hong Kong. These are just a few examples and all this as a result of just serving soup and filled buns (Baozi) to the homeless here in Xi’an. It still seems strange how firstly these organisations find us yet more so why us?

2010 already looks like it will be no less dull as we are already in the process of planning some new exciting projects for next year, working in partnership with a large international corporation, which if our plans are finalised will enable us to train and provide the homeless with skills and create employment for them rather than just finding them work.

To celebrate our anniversary we are now in the throes of organising our annual Christmas Party for the homeless which around 160 people usually attend, undoubtedly our best night of the year. So think of us as we join our street friends, complete with Santa hats, meat dumplings, soup, fruit, cake, live music, dancing and Karaoke to celebrate yet another landmark year.

From the outset, in each area of our operations we set the bar as high as possible and despite our wide range of activities we have retained our principles of never asking for support yet when needed it appears, and also maintaining that 100% of any support we do receive continues to be passed onto those to whom it was intended as we continue to operate with zero overheads.

There are too many thank you’s which over the years have all contributed to enabling us to achieve all we have to date, not least is the 1300 volunteers who have all given their time freely yet there are so many others who have also contributed so much, in what ever way they felt able. Combined we have all achieved what we have together, as you can’t remove any one single cog from a machine and expect to get the same output. After four years we are still a small organisation but we are still here and we expect to be here for some time to come so thank you to one and all for all you have shared.

If you would like to read a small sample of other peoples experiences of their time spent at the Soup Kitchen please visit:-
Coach Bay’s article
Claire Hall - The Soul Cultivator’s article
Xianease article 
Mark Vranicar’s article

Some special mentions
The Catholic Church Service Centre in Xi’an for their continued unfaltering support.
Mandala Trust
Swire Group/Coca Cola China
Rotary Shanghai
A wide variety of VSO and student groups that have come to work with us from both abroad and China
Bowland High School, Clitheroe, England who have adopted our charity for ‘09-‘10
Lastly all the homeless of Xi’an and all we serve for giving us the motivation to continue.

I hope this finds you and yours well and wish you all the best for the coming festive period and finds you striding into 2010 healthy, rested and refueled.

As ever, much gratitude for all you offer us and the people we serve.
Tony

For more information see http://www.yellowrivercharity.com/index.asp
Or to contact us at SoupKitchenChina@gmail.com
For more information of how to support us please visit http://www.yellowrivercharity.com/english/want-to-help.asp