We dream, we believe, we achieve!
MiFan Mama
Mifan Mama Scottish Registered Charity SC044683
Four women, all in Shanghai to support families and careers, met the children of a privately run orphanage in Anhui Province. Mifan Mama began with a bag of rice, loose change from purses and pockets, and a burning desire to help make these children’s lives better. But these women realised that if they were to truly improve the lives of the orphans, the help needed to be ongoing, not just for a single month. In 2009, Mifan Mama was founded to provide ongoing help with food, clothing, and medical support.
Five years later, help from Mifan Mama goes in different geographic directions, to more and different locations with different needs. The group remains true to its goal of helping orphans with their basic needs, by providing goods or services where needed. The group now works on facilitating, in addition to providing direct help to the facilities we help.
Where does it all come from? Donations from individuals, groups, companies, in cash and in-kind goods to distribute, clothing, snacks, juice, milk and many other things come in this way, the rest, Mifan Mama purchases from donations. Mifan Mama also makes and sells goods to raise funds – their cookbook Secrets of Dot’s Kitchen won Gourmand Magazine’s Best Charity Cookbook in China in 2013.
Mifan Mama provides formula and diapers to Ruzhou cerebral palsy centre; food support to a local home for children in Shanghai; irregular donations of food and clothing to a large orphanage in Shanghai; and ongoing facilitate the hiring of a counsellor for the children this year. They support education for some of the poorest students in He’nan Province.
Working with Metro Cash and Carry, Mifan Mama sends out ‘Boxes of Love’ each year, which reach over 120 orphanages and 20,000 children with a small gift box, to help them understand that they are not forgotten at the most important time of the year.
Boxes of Love reaching some of the children in remote orphanages this year, left photos. Two of the children at the cerebral palsy centre in Ruzhou and some of our goods in action there, bottom photo.
From the March 2014 edition of Courier magazine of the Shanghai Expatriate Association:
They operate Shining Star, a foster home for blind and partially sighted orphans in Shanghai. In this home, a small number of children are cared for in a family run environment, taught basic life skills, and prepared for the world around them, education and hopefully a family of their own. Staffed by locally hired ayis, Shining Star welcomes volunteers who can work with the children or help administratively. In 2014 Mifan Mama hopes to support another orphanage in Hebei Province which they will visit and assess in the spring.
“So rice, yes, we still do rice, but there’s so much more too! How do we do it? We do it together.”
Mifan Mama is comprised of a group of individuals, mainly women, mainly foreigners, many ‘trailing spouses’, and professionals. If you are interested in learning more or joining Mifan Mama, please email mifanmama@gmail.com.