Celebrating 25 Years
Seeing the potential in every child
You can join in the celebration by hosting a fundraising house party with your friends and family during the first two weeks of November!
- Pick a time, date and place for your party.
- Receive an exclusive premiere link to OneSky’s 25th Anniversary film which will take you and your guests on a brief, exciting video tour of our programs, with an introduction by CBS news host, Jane Pauley.
- Raise funds for the children!
Messages from OneSky’s Friends
It makes me so happy to be a small part of the OneSky journey and support the incredible work of the organization through donations, both personally and through For Purpose Kids. To be able to gift our hand-knit dolls to OneSky, so that the children in the various OneSky programs will be able to play with dolls that look like them, warms my heart in so many ways. All children deserve to see themselves reflected in the toys that they play with, particularly so they grow up understanding how beautiful they are, both inside and out.
OneSky is so near and dear to our hearts. Shortly after we adopted our daughter, Anna, from Hunan Province in 2002, we also discovered the wonderful work of OneSky (then Half the Sky) and started to support them financially. Years later, we met Jenny Bowen at an event promoting her book Wish You Happy Forever, and she chatted with Anna (then around age 12) and they realized Anna had actually benefitted from one of the very first programs!
Congratulations OneSky for your 25 years of important, impactful work. It’s incredible to think of all the lives you have changed in these last 25 years. Thank you for your commitment and dedication to care for the vulnerable children under our sky.
When first besotted with OneSky back in Beijing during the first decade of this century, I was struck by a new brand of empathy. Until then, the mere mention of Chinese orphans was inevitably followed by sighs and the image of bricks and mortar, housing cast off baby girls awaiting adoption. Then came OneSky! Rather than focusing on the placement of babies beyond their own shores, OneSky sought to provide paths within China, launching children into life with love, care and education. We didn’t build orphanages; we crafted lives.
Dear OneSky,
Happy 25th Anniversary!! What you have done for this world is incredible. OneSky means so much to me because I was directly impacted, inspired, and involved by this amazing organization. OneSky has changed the trajectory of my life. The daily one on one care that I received as an infant in the orphanage was provided by OneSky. This was a huge benefit to me as well as being incredibly lucky be provided a baby book of photos, written notes and journal entries of my time at the orphanage. Now, at 15 years old, I can look back at my past without having to wonder as much about my early years. Through a school project, I researched how one to one care impacted and benefited my development. OneSky’s dedication to the support of orphaned children helped me and so many others. I chose to fundraise for OneSky so they can help others as they helped me.
Congratulations, OneSky! Happy anniversary! It has been a pleasure to get to know OneSky team and their wonderful work that has touched many around the globe. I would like to thank you all for your tremendous efforts in supporting caregivers in Mongolia and internationally.
Happy twenty-fifth anniversary to OneSky! This organization is near and dear to my heart because of my own background and adoption story. The orphanage I lived in for the first fifteen months of my life did not work with One Sky and was incredibly poor. There were four babies per crib, which had no mattress. My only toy was a piece of string and a pacifier. When I was adopted, I was malnourished, had a respiratory infection, and didn’t even know how to crawl. Once I arrived home, I learned how to crawl and walk in a matter of weeks and couldn’t be kept still for more than a minute, trying to make up for all of my lost time spent in the orphanage. OneSky enables babies and kids to grow up in a happy, stimulating environment, while still being in an orphanage. Their training for nannies allows them to take care of the orphans in a supportive, loving way, which is essential for a child’s development. When they are adopted, there is no need to make up for any lost time, as they are given a healthy, nurturing place in which to grow up. Growing up this way shouldn’t be a privilege, but a given right for all. That’s why OneSky is such a vital organization. Thank you for all you do for children, nannies, and orphanages throughout Asia.
OneSky-Happy 25th Anniversary! We are so grateful to your organization for all you do to enhance the lives of so many children. My daughter’s story explains why OneSky is crucial to children across Asia. Nola was taken to an orphanage when she was 2 weeks old. If there had been a One Sky program available, it would have accelerated her early development providing a more caring atmosphere for her to thrive. The programs and the training they provide are even more important for children who don’t connect with their ‘forever families’ during the critical early childhood developmental years. We support One Sky through fundraising efforts and look forward to continue helping for the next 25 years… and beyond!
OneSky has been a part of my family for as long as I can remember. I learned about their amazing work not long after I became mother to my wonderful daughter Eliza, adopted from China. Over the years we have supported and volunteered for OneSky because the caregivers it trains are changing precious lives and ensuring that they get a second chance at all that a childhood should entail. We have watched with pride as the programs have spread to other locations in Asia and can’t wait to see what happens next. Happy Anniversary OneSky! Here’s to at least another 25 years of enabling children to meet their potential.
Is the old adage “It is better to give than to receive” really true? Interestingly, modern research has proven it true! Multiple studies show that giving to charity or others brings a bigger smile and lasting happiness than buying things for yourself. I experienced this too. Supporting OneSky for all children these past 10 years and planning support for the future truly enriched my life with joy and fulfillment. I am amazed with OneSky’s unique approach in training caregivers and offering top quality orphanage programs that bring love, art, and beautiful smiles to thousands of children. As a supporter, my heart filled with joy when OneSky expanded to serve 3 countries! I’m so glad that my friends and I agreed to stop giving unnecessary gifts to each other so we could give more to charity to make a positive difference. You will receive blessings of joy and purpose by giving to OneSky to help children in need!
Let’s all join these little ones as they
celebrate OneSky’s 25th birthday!
Since we first started our work, OneSky has helped
286,000+ marginalized children thrive in
mainland China, Vietnam, Mongolia and Hong Kong SAR.
Back when I founded Half the Sky, just about everyone said my idea was impossible. Why would China allow me – a foreigner – to try to change the way children were treated in government orphanages? But I’d watched my newly adopted daughter, Maya, come to life through intensive responsive care; I’d seen the magic happen.
No one else was offering to help at the time. I just knew I had to try.
I went to China armed only with my own family’s experience and what little I’d been able to learn on what was then called the “world wide web”:
The months immediately after birth are critical to normal development. Brain synapses increase twenty-fold. A child’s interaction with its environment determines the actual number of brain cells, the number of brain synapses and how the brain functions…how it’s “wired.” Without stimulation and nurturing care, children who survive the early years suffer extreme developmental delays. Delays that will handicap them for life.
The babies I saw in that first government orphanage made what I’d learned online all too real. The rooms were silent. No cries.
Babies begin life with only one tool. They cry. These babies had learned their only tool didn’t work. No one came. And so they shut down.
China’s orphaned babies became OneSky’s first teachers.
Today our OneSky approach is practiced all over China. We’ve seen more miracles than we could have imagined. Why not stop there?
Because what happened to China’s abandoned babies could happen to any child, anywhere.
When very young children are torn from family and left neglected with untrained caregivers, it’s easy to see how they fail to thrive. When they have a parent or parents or grandparents who love them, it’s harder to understand, but it happens all the same.
It is happening now—all over the world.
Today’s poorest families live under tremendous stress. With the global economy in constant turmoil, struggling rural parents must leave traditions behind to find work in distant factories where they work impossibly long hours in low-wage jobs. Even if they can bring small children along, there is little time or resources left for more than basic care, and often no one around turn to for help or guidance.
OneSky is committed to bring lessons learned in China to children in Vietnam, Mongolia, Hong Kong SAR, and eventually into new countries—wherever little ones have no access to the nurturing care they need to thrive. Because, thanks to our tiny teachers in China and 25 years of practice, OneSky knows how to turn young lives around.
ALL children are born with a drive to develop and grow. When small, they all need exactly the same thing.
If you know—first with your heart, then with your eyes, and then validated by research—precisely how to change the trajectory of marginalized children’s lives by reaching them at the youngest age with quality nurturing care, why wouldn’t you?
It’s not about politics or borders, not about whose children, which country…. It’s about humanity and about family, and that is about us all.
So, we’re just getting started!
That is why, 25 years later, I am still fully committed to supporting the amazing work of OneSky. I dearly hope you are too.
With love and gratitude,
Jenny Bowen
Founder, OneSky for all children
