Bouncers for Babies

The other day I got an email message from my friend Tracy (who is the older sister of my very good friend Erin) who lives in Shanghai. She spends one afternoon a week at the Shanghai Children's Home, an orphanage which houses hundreds and hundreds of children. This facility has 200 children under the age of 18 months! With only 4 adults to every 20 children, the babies obviously have to spend a lot of time on their own.

Tracy's email was regarding a nonprofit organization called Angel Covers that does incredible things for orphaned children worldwide. One of her high school classmates started this organization after adopting her first little girl from China and seeing how so many little ones in orphanages didn't even have blankets to keep them warm at night. Angel Covers began making and donating blankets for these babies, and have expanded to provide medicine, books, toys, food and other basic needs for children in orphanages all over the world.

Recently, Angel Covers started working on Project Tigger, which provides bouncy chairs for orphanages so that the babies can get out of their cribs and receive some stimulation during the day. While these bouncers cost anywhere from $30 - $60 in the U.S., Project Tigger gets them sent to orphanages in China for $8 a piece, including shipping!

So Tracy got her contact person at the orphanage in touch with her friend Kari at Angel Covers, and they arranged for 50 new bouncers from their next order to be allotted for Tracy's orphanage in Shanghai (they currently only have 2 and one is broken). She emailed a bunch of her family and friends, asking that each person donate just $8 for a bouncer. So much money was raised for the project through Tracy's efforts, bouncers are now being sent to other orphanages in the area as well!

One of the neatest things about Tracy's involvement in the project is that she will be able to take pictures once the bouncers are delivered and set up. That means everyone who donated can see exactly where their $8 went and all the little babies that will be benefiting!

Angel Covers has many other really neat programs to benefit orphaned children, and you can go to their website and check out all of the exciting things they are doing. They have a number of products you can buy, and they also have gift cards that you can send to people as gifts after making a donation in their name--a great gift for the person who has everything!