周黎明 (Raymond Zhou's bilingual blog) 用中文写娱评，用英文写时评

A Sunny Spring Morning for “Rain Men” and “Rain Kids”

Taotao is almost 20, yet he acts like a toddler.

Saturday morning, on the campus of Beijing City International School (BCIS), someone gave him a candy. While eating, he advertently dropped the wrapping paper on the ground. Carefully picking it up, he walked to the nearest garbage can and put it inside.

Taotao suffers from autism, but that morning he was the center of attention. A television camera was directed at him, and dozens of kids, parents and volunteers showered him with gifts and love.

It was truly “spring in the city,” as the event was called by the downtown school.

“We could not have anticipated a better day,” enthused Monique Engelaan, mother of Lian, a first-grader at BCIS. It was sunny and warm, and the sandstorm that has been sweeping across the city was having a respite.

The spring fair was organized by the Parent-Teacher-Community Association (PTCA) in conjunction with BCIS. It was the first charity event Engelaan, the PTCA treasurer, had organized in China since she arrived in the city eight months ago.

It’s a common practice for international schools to have such charity events, she explained, and “the purpose is to raise money for children in need, and more importantly, to raise awareness for those children with special disabilities.”

It was not easy to her 6-year-old adopted daughter to understand the meaning of it all. “She is too young. She’ll understand it when she grows up. It’s important that kids like her know what’s outside and are willing to help those less fortunate whenever they can,” said Engelaan, who was from Holland and joins her in Beijing who works for Air France.

There were about two dozen booths along the promenade of the campus, selling food, knickknacks and handicrafts. The profits would go to The Stars and Rain Education Institute for Autism. A corporate donor, who insisted on anonymity, had made a big sum in cash contribution.

Children and parents played a variety of games on the sports ground. People sat around on the grass and basked in the sun. “The important thing is for kids to participate in something like this and learn to be loving and caring,” said Nancy Wickberg, mother of 6-year-old Brandon and 8-year-old Aaron, and president of the PTCA.

It was not the first time that children at BCIS played alongside autistic kids from Stars and Rain. “We have visited them twice,” explained Wickberg.

It was hard for the multilingual kids at the international school to play the same games, such as tossing hoopla onto bottles, with children who can barely handle their own daily needs. “But our kids are very patient. They want to interact and want to help,” said Wickberg.

*Stars of hope

Taotao is one of 2,000 children who have been beneficiaries of Stars and Rain, a grassroots organization devoted to children with autism and their families all across the nation. Founded in 1993 by Tian Huiping, mother of an autistic child, the institute, which is mainly a special school for autistic children, provides four 11-week sessions a year for 270 children and their families.

“There is no effective cure for autism,” said Sun Zhongkai, a development officer for the school. “But early diagnosis and intervention are vital to an autistic child’s development.”

Autism is a developmental disability that impairs sensory input, causing problems in social behavior, communication, and learning. An estimated five million people in China have autism. Most people get their knowledge of autism from the movie “Rain Man,” starring Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise, said Sun.

“There are indeed a few people with autism who have unique talent in some small area. But it is quite rare,” clarified Sun. At Stars and Rain, they’ve had one kid who has a photographic memory of a random scene and can paint, say, a courtyard, complete with all details, after just one look. Another kid can do arithmetic like a calculator. Some are obsessed with symbols or numbers.

There are gradations of autism. Every autistic person is different. Stars and Rain uses Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) techniques and tailor the program to each child, said Sun Zhongkai. Moreover, the school teaches families the skills they need to improve their child’s daily life. It also conducts workshops for hundreds of families living outside Beijing, reaching beyond the children the school directly serves.

Stars and Rain has teachers trained in preschool education, but it is served by a much larger army of volunteers. “Our volunteers come from every segment of the society, most notably from corporations that chip in donations and from college students who spend time with the children. They come to paint the walls, sweep floors, bring gifts to the kids and help them with games, singing and clapping with them,” said Sun Zhongkai.

“The intelligence of autistic children is much lower than that of normal kids of similar age. When we have a goal in learning, we have to divide it into several smaller goals. So, patience is paramount,” observed Sun.

The volunteers reach out to the autistic children who are in a sense sealed in a cocoon of their own making. It is not easy to interact with them. You have to have patience, emphasized Sun. But gradually some of the kids may show signs of response and improve their ability to communicate with other people.

Sun cited an example about one mother who had given up hope on her child. But under the guidance of the staff and the encouragement of volunteers, the child’s condition began to improve. Now he can have simple communication with his family members.

*Heart of love

One of the volunteer groups helping out the Stars and Rain children is called LEAD, which is short for Letting Education Achieve Dreams. It had a booth at the entrance of the international school at the Saturday charity event and its T-shirts were selling briskly.

Hu Dandan, a young woman working at a Beijing advertising agency, has been with the group since its inception in 2003.

“We used to hang out at the same online forum and discuss how to do something meaningful in our free time,” she said. “If you have time to kill during the weekend, why don’t you spend it to help others, someone who needs help?”

LEAD has some 600 registered members. Active members account for one sixth of that and, unlike most volunteer groups, it is mostly made up of white-collar workers. “Only about 20 per cent are college students,” said Hu. She devotes on average one time each month to the group’s activities. Of all the Stars and Rain-related events, she has participated in a dozen of them.

LEAD has its focus on education for the underprivileged. One of these is children of migrant workers. Its biggest and longest program is with Huilei School in Changping, a Beijing suburb. Volunteers would go there every weekend and teach them mathematics, English and Chinese. They also organize extracurricular activities such as taking students to science museums.

“We don’t have a budget. The cost incurred is paid for by ourselves,” explained Hu.

Urban poor also receives its attention. A longs-standing program is to tutor students in Beijing’s Dongcheng District, students who otherwise cannot afford private tutors. It was started right after the SARS scare, when eight volunteers divided into three teams went to coach three students from low-income families. Many of the same volunteers are still working in the same program today.

Two earlier programs were designed to help juvenile delinquents and children whose parents were serving terms. They were terminated when administrators from relevant departments found it troublesome to receive the volunteers on weekends.

“Besides coaching, we would help translate documents and set up websites for those we reach out. I teach Chinese at Huilei, but some of my time is also spent at Stars and Rain,” said Hu Dandan, the LEAD volunteer.

“To many of us, being a volunteer has become a way of life,” she offered.

On the BCIS campus, Taotao the autistic youth was still hesitating when responding to greetings from strangers. He won’t recover in a day, and may never recover completely, but he is better than before and his family is also feeling a little better because nowadays more strangers are friendly to them rather than look at them as if they were aliens, said a teacher from Stars and Rain.

Because of volunteers like Hu Dandan, charity organizers like Monique Engelaan and schools like BCIS and Stars and Rain, kids like Taotao has more hope.