The Enduring Legacy of China’s First “First Lady”

The current leadership of the China Welfare Institute: (left to right) Assistant Counselor Chen Baihua, Deputy Party Secretary Ji Hong-xing, Vice Chairman and Party Secretary Wang Luning, Vice Chairman and Secretary General Ai Baiying, and Counselor Zou Wei.

 All for the Children

Care for children had been Madame Sun Yat-sen’s key concern during her lifetime, and this focus has been maintained by the CWI.

In its kindergartens and schools the CWI emphasizes equal opportunity and gives priority to the needs of individual children. In this sense, the schools CWI runs are not dissimilar from the Maria Montessori schools of the West. The learning process in CWI kindergartens and schools is designed to be as interactive as possible. For instance, every child is encouraged to participate in performances at kindergarten music festivals. At each stage, the unique talents of individual children – whether they be in art, science or music – are nurtured in order to build self-confidence.

The number of organizations founded by Soong Ching Ling that target the needs of children is not large. Nevertheless, they occupy a distinct position in childhood education in China. The CWI’s schools are pioneers in many areas of education.

Soong had a personal hand in the founding of many CWI schools and institutions. In 1947, she set up the CWF Children’s Art Theater. In 1949, she established Shanghai’s first boarding nursery. In 1950, she set up New China’s first periodical for children, Children’s Epoch. In 1952, Soong set up New China’s first maternal and infant health hospital, the CWI International Peace Maternity and Child Health Hospital, with 100,000 roubles she received as part of a peace prize from the USSR. In 1953, she personally chose the site for New China’s first comprehensive youth center for extracurricular activities, known as the CWI Children’s Palace.

The CWI has also taken on the task of training kindergarten teachers from around the country. Training falls into three categories. The first involves budding teachers from poorer families. Tuition costs are covered by the CWI through charitable donations. More than 8,700 people have benefited from this program. The second category is advanced training in teaching theory and practice; 1,000 people have graduated from this course since its inception. The third training stream is sponsored by the Ministry of Education and aims to attract the best-performing kindergarten teachers in the country. To date, 400 outstanding educators have gone through this program and headed back to their home provinces, where they are responsible for both instructing children and spreading their knowledge and skills to other teachers.

The CWI has six decades of experiences in running kindergartens and schools. Its accumulated expertise is invaluable as China seeks to raise the overall standards of education across the country. CWI’s Shanghai schools in particular are at the forefront of China’s education.

Every summer for the past decade, teachers working in CWI kindergartens have been sent to those in less developed regions such as Xinjiang, Ningxia, and Tibet. In this way the CWI is taking tangible steps to improve the educational level of these regions.

Helping Those in Need

The CWI and the Shanghai Soong Ching Ling Foundation are separate entities, but they have cooperated extensively throughout their existence. In total, they have jointly raised and spent RMB 10 million in poverty-stricken areas of China.

A portion of this money was used to reduce infant mortality in the countryside. Due to poor transportation, low income and traditional birth customs, only about 10 percent of pregnant women give birth in hospitals in some rural areas. This leads to higher mortality rates, not just for infants, but for mothers also. To tackle this issue, the CWI initiated its Mother and Infant Safety Project, which aims to raise women’s awareness of the benefits of hospital birth, train local midwives and set up maternity and infant healthcare centers. The project has already made a difference in China’s western regions.

In recent times, the CWI has also supported the educational needs of the Yi ethnic minority in Sichuan Province’s Daliang Mountain Range. Some villages there consist of as few as 10 families, and the teachers are scarce because of the harsh environment, remoteness and low pay. Children have to walk from the mountains to school, some up to seven hours a day. CWI staff visited the area, and spent several days with locals conducting an investigation into their specific needs. The suggestions they subsequently drafted were adopted by the Ministry of Education, and have improved children’s’ access to teachers in the area.

Soong Ching Ling once remarked that the essence of meaningful charity is seeing where help is needed and then going to that place. In recent years, seniors have been in need of assistance. China is aging faster than ever before. Seniors, many of whom live on meager pensions, struggle to make ends meet. The country is growing wealthier and its social welfare system is improving, but some seniors still fall through the cracks. CWI, seeing this problem, has begun running nursing homes for seniors.

Some are perplexed at the CWI’s move to include nursing homes in its activities. Its traditional focus has always been women and children, and it has earned a good reputation for its work with those groups. But there is no reason why the plight of seniors should not also be addressed by the CWI.

In traditional Chinese social philosophy, children are deemed the most important generation – even more so than seniors. Therefore the traditional focus of families, society and elders is on protecting and supporting the young. The CWI thinks it is time to reassess. As Soong said, see where help is needed and go to that place. And right now in China, it’s seniors who are in need of help.

The CWI’s first nursing home was set up as an experimental center to look at ways to improve residents’ lives. The emphasis is on a scientific understanding of the needs of the retired. The home employed sociology graduates from Fudan University and the Shanghai University of Science and Technology.

The CWI’s first nursing home has been in operation for four years now, and has built itself a reputation as one of the country’s leading homes in terms of seniors’ quality of life.

The CWI nursing home aims to follow the example set by the institute’s schools and share their expertise with the government and other centers for aged care. It is also looking further afield to other countries in order to learn from their experiences.