Life saving operations for children in China

lifesaving_in_china

Combining their love of cooking with their colleagues love of Asian food, Sangeeta and Namsi in our Structured and Asset Finance Unit (SAFU) organised an Indian food fest, where hungry colleagues paid over £125 for the privilege of tucking into a range of delicious samosas, pakoras and bhajees. Their contribution was matched by the bank and a total of £250 was handed over to Rachel, who has just returned from her visit.

Read Rachel’s brief report on her trip below:

” In July 2009, I set off to volunteer in a Chinese orphanage for 5 weeks. Having never done anything like this before, I was understandably nervous! Arriving in China was a massive culture shock, yet soon I settled down into daily orphanage life. As a medical student in the UK, my responsibilities were minimal. Here in China, we learned to help where and when we could. All of the babies in the orphanage had medical conditions, and as such, required a lot of care and attention. Our duties in the orphanage were to go on rounds in the morning and check that all of the babies had taken their medication, fed well and produced enough dirty nappies during the night and morning. We sat in the clinic room and gave the nannies advice and simple medications. We spent more time with the children who were particularly ill, trying to figure out what we could try next from our limited supply of medications. We also assisted the surgeon in carrying out operations such as incision and drainage of abscesses or hernia repairs. The babies suffered from a wide variety of conditions- cerebral palsy, congenital heart defects and Down syndrome, to name a few. Some children were lucky enough to have been given curative operations, which meant that in the future, they would be eligible for adoption.

Prior to leaving England, I set upon a fundraising mission! Along with the kind help of the co-operative bank, I was able to raise enough money to pay for one little girl to have bowel surgery. I was able to spend time with her whilst I was in the orphanage. After leaving in August 09, I heard that her surgery had been carried out and was successful. After a few more months in the orphanage, she will be healed, and will hopefully go on to live an entirely normal life. I can not thank you enough for your contribution

Although my five weeks in the orphanage were a huge shock to the system, they were also a really valuable experience. Despite being unable to communicate with the local people, or eat the chinese food (!), I learned that some things remain true wherever we are. People will always want to dance in the streets, offer hospitality, and stare at strange looking people! And there will also be people who want to spend their time looking after children without families, providing them with the food, warmth and comfort they would otherwise lack. Im glad, that just for this short time, I was able to be part of that.”  

This is just one example of the community projects our team in SAFU have supported this year. The team have been involved in building schools in Uganda, preventing the spread of swine flu in Nicaragua and, closer to home, the development of facilities for disadvantaged children in the Lake District.

Richard Wilcox head of SAFU said; “Support of these projects helps embed the CFS values and brings closer to home, in a very practical way, how we can all help deliver benefits to the community, be that local or global.”

Posted on Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 in Campaigns, Microfinance, Microfinance around the globe

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Why Microfinance

We’ve been supporting microfinance initiatives around the globe in over 25 countries worldwide including Nicaragua, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Ecuador, Kenya and Bosnia. To facilitate this support we created a special £25m fund to help the develop small businesses in new and developing countries as well as some of the world’s poorest countries.

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In April ‘09 in conjunction with the new goodwithmoney website we re-launched our new and improved good with money blog to encourage greater dialogue with our colleagues, customers, members and anyone else who is interested in the ethical, social responsible and community work that we do.
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