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By Zhou Bo, Amity Foundation

I am Zhou Bo from Amity Foundation, Nanjing, China. I have been working on the social welfare project for six years; I am in charge of coordinating the orphanage project. And I am also the Assistant Director of the Social Welfare Project, helping in the management of other projects such as deaf education, prevention of blindness, programs for leprosy victims, and also medical projects. Amity is an independent non-government organization, which was created in 1985 by Christians to promote education, social services, health, and rural development from China's coastal provinces in the East to the minority areas of the West.

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By Kyle Evans

BuildaBridge is coordinating a Diaspora of Hope Artist on Call program this Thanksgiving in Guatemala City, Guatemala, Portau Prince, Haiti and Nairobi, Kenya.  November 22-30, 3-5 teams, including 10 artists each, will partner with mirror teams in every point of destination to bring wholeness and transformation to 50-100 underserved youth.   

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The church lobby buzzed with excitement as students, parents, and younger siblingsmingled with BuildaBridge staff and volunteers on a recent rainy fall evening at Second Baptist Church of Germantown. In between introductions to new classmates and teachers, students joked, made colorful nametags, and helped themselves to hot chocolate donated by Mount Airy's Infusion Coffee and Tea. 

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It takes not one bus, but two!  During his summer break, Deion, a 13 year old student, took two buses in order to arrive in West Philadelphia at 8:00am for our Artology van pick up.  He could have slept in, played video games, hung out with friends, but instead he chose to come to Artology, a dynamic hands-on day camp designed to spark students' curiosity through a curriculum that uniquely integrates the sciences and the arts.  Deion, along with 30% of our 21 students, had perfect attendance at Artology. 

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As summer winds to a close, the BuildaBridge office is buzzing as our staff prepare to kick off our 2008-2009 Create! Discovery program. Now in its fourth year, Create! Discovery partners with community agencies in Philadelphia to bring arts-integrated education to low-income children and youth, many of whom are coping with homelessness.

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Just before the afternoon session began, it started to rain—really, really hard. It was raining sideways, and, because the school is at the base of a valley, all of the water flows downhill towards it. While it normally trickled down the steep bank towards the sewage creek, the water shot out of the pipe, roughly five feet across, at a frighteningly high velocity. The water came out almost horizontally and nearly cleared the entire creek. It was almost as if created for an amusement park—only more intense. I could picture the raft full of shrieking passengers going through the torrent and over the rapids.

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The afternoon storm had threatened houses and created swirling rapids in the sewage creek. The following day, as the children arrived for their final presentation, “mineros,” miners, took advantage of the lowered water level to search for recyclables to sell. The color and enthusiasm inside the school seemed to exist in a world outside of the slum, but the dirt on the kids’ clothes and the miners outside brought back the reality of their situation and the world in which they live.

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On the balcony earlier, Evertsz said that some time ago God had come to her in a dream, instructing her to visit the gang member with whom we had spoken outside of the school. While she was afraid, she went anyway. Later on, he was shot. This was one of the first times he had been out of bed in months.

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“See all the shotgun blasts? That’s why people don’t like to have windows.” While the rest of the group continued their teaching, I ventured “al otro lado,” to the other side. There is no fence separating the two sides; the gangs decide the perimeters.

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