“People with disabilities are some of the most stigmatized members of most communities—including China; if the church is not going to welcome them, who is?” asked Xu Bing, executive director of GIFT.

Partnering with Chinese nonprofit

In August 2018, Professors Judy Vander Woude, Peggy Goetz, and Jill Bates traveled with speech pathology students to China to work with Children with Special Needs are a Gift Parents’ Support Center (GIFT). GIFT is a Chinese nonprofit, one of the few there that creates peer networks for families with disabled children. Working with Chinese churches organized by GIFT, the Calvin profs and students provided on-site and online education for pastors, families and health providers at a week-long family camp.

In Zheng Zhou, China, where GIFT is located, there is only one children’s hospital, and little to no rehabilitative services, explained Vander Woude, professor of speech pathology. Nine years ago Bing, a trained linguist, saw a great need to support families of children with disabilities while providing respite care for a Chinese family fostering children with special needs. After partnering with Bethany Christian Services, Bing began GIFT.

Challenging social stigmas

GIFT’s vision, “to promote and support healthy families and to provide a social environment in which special needs children are highly valued by demonstrating God’s love,” influences everything that happens at GIFT, explained Vander Woude. Around the world there is a stigma that someone in the family did something wrong to have given birth to a disabled child, she explained. “Bing is all about healing families because other people who see children with disabilities think that either the parents or children committed some horrible act in the past.”  

Since 2013, Calvin has taken students on several interim trips to work at GIFT. In addition, Vander Woude and college, Joe Bates, have been back every year at least one more time to speak on disability to parents, pastors and church leaders. This year, Bing invited Calvin to attend GIFT’s family summer camp.

In addition to lectures, Calvin students were able to demonstrate to parents how to play with their children as well as develop communication using various interactive play activities.

At the end of this year’s camp, parents of children with disabilities were able to come up and share difficulties they have had. “We wanted them to know that they are good parents, because they don’t hear that very often, especially if their children have a hard time following the rules,” said Vander Woude. “By the end, people were in tears.”

Anticipating further partnership

�ճ����Nagel Institute most recently supported the production and distribution of self-guided professional Power Point presentations about disabilities for GIFT. “These lessons are put on the cloud so parents can download information all in mandarin—translated by two students,” explained Vander Woude

“This partnership is not a one way street; they are partnering with us and we get to partner with them—how rich is that for Calvin,” said Vander Woude. “Moving forward, we are really working on sustainability. We are busy developing new materials and looking for more organizations to partner with,” said Vander Woude.