The association "China's forgotten orphans" was founded in 1998, and is involved with looking after handicapped chinese orphans, taking care of a total of five orphanages in Tianjin, Henan and Fuyang.
Parents, often imprisoned for trivial things, worry greatly about their children whom nobody is taking care of, since children - not just small children - are not allowed to accompany their parents in prison. The parents are often serving life sentences and so they cannot look after their children. It is estimated that over 90% of children of incarcerated parents are not looked after and are left to their own devices. The children in the children's village, however, are offered a regular daily schedule, are looked after and given medical care (the children are often traumatised and need psychological support), so they can live in a safe and stable environment, where they'll have the opportunity to receive schooling and vocational training, enabling them to create a foundation for their life and to become self-reliant and independent.
It is home to 27 children aged from 4 to 19 years of age, whose parents or surviving parent is serving a prison sentence or who come from difficult family circumstances. The project is small and intimate, and provides the children with the necessary support and assistance so that they can develop as positively as possible and work through the traumas they have experienced. Secondly, great attention is paid to the children's schooling and then their professional training, so that the children who leave the home are equipped to find work on the open marketplace.