China Study Tour: Starfish Foster Home

Website: http://www.thestarfishfosterhome.org/index.aspx
China Contact Information
Starfish Foster Home
Attn: Amanda de Lange
Maple Leaf New City, Area C, Block B-502
Ke Ji Road, Gao Xin
Xian 710075
CHINA
86.29.88044168 (Cell);
86.29.88390648 (Home)
chinese.starfishthrower@gmail.com

Tuesday morning, we had the privilege to have Amanda de Lange, founder of Starfish Foster Home, give us a talk on non-profit work in China.

Amanda’s story for being in this line of work seems to be similar to many people who saw others in suffering and decided to do something about it – not generally a particularly clearly thought out plan initially – and took it upon themselves to make something happen. Amanda takes in babies with special needs who would otherwise likely die in the orphanages that they had been living in due to their special requirements. These babies can range from having problems like cleft palate, spina bifida, hemangioma, or congenital heart defects. All of these are treatable, but many parents in rural China don’t know where to go to help their child, or don’t have the money with which to do so, and so they are abandoned.

To illustrate the severity of the problem: children born with cleft palate in the United States (which happens at a much lower rate than in China, probably due to maternal malnourishment in the developing world) will have surgery to fix the deformity and will live the rest of their lives with a scar, but little else will be different for them. If a cleft palate baby goes to an orphanage here, the mortality rate is around 80%, according to Amanda, based upon the lack of available care to make sure that the baby gets the food they need to grow.

Any non-profit faces problems working in China. For one, it is very difficult for NGOs to enter or work in China, and Amanda said that none have been approved to work in China for the past ten years. For another, the legal framework doesn’t exist as it does in other countries to reward donors for giving to a charity, and the charity has problems setting up as a not-for-profit entity. For that reason, Starfish Foster Home is set up as a 501(c)(3) non-profit in the U.S., rather than in China.

Some of the management problems that Amanda faces are due to Chinese culture, and some are due to her own managerial style. She has faced numerous problems with her staff not being able to anticipate problems, or respond sluggishly when there is a serious problem, such as a stove broken for two days, meaning no warm milk for the babies. She also works way too many hours in the day, because she doesn’t have a capable administrative staff to take some of the load off of her shoulders. In addition, Amanda’s style is passionate – not business process oriented. Her love for her babies is more than apparent, but she admitted herself that she has flown by the seat of her pants for the past five years and more or less has approached her growth and non-profit business development in a very ad hoc way. If she had more specific and detailed processes for her staff to follow when inventory was low, something was broken, even in the form of a decision tree, she wouldn’t have to spend nearly as much time thinking for them, and could spend more of her time on fundraising and networking with the people who can help the children most.

Some of the organizations and people Amanda has worked with:
Smile Train
Operation Smile
Lisa Buckmiller (University of Arkansas Children’s Medical Center)

One of the things I found most admirable about Amanda is that even in the face of serious adversity, such as her rooms being torn down and needing to find new lodging for her nannies and her babies, and in the face of an uncertain future for her foster home based on the political climate in China, she still is passionate and giving of herself and has spent her life savings on this project, even when it probably would have seemed prudent to leave the work to someone else. I deeply respect and admire anyone who can take their reaction to the pain and suffering of others and build something to respond to that need. It is unknown to me how many babies Amanda has saved through her work, but even one baby would have made her effort worth it.