The Little Red Scarf Project is growing by leaps and bounds. We were thrilled to report in this month's newsletter that we finished July with 533 completed heart surgeries, putting us at about 67% of our goal. And, even as our staff and medical teams work hard to care for the children already in the program, our volunteers have been working hard to raise program awareness in the community. This month, Little Red Scarf volunteers placed a publicity booth at Lanzhou Northwest Normal University to encourage students to help connect sick children in their hometowns with us. Thanks to their help, we are looking forward to finding and serving more children with CHD.

This month, we also bid farewell to a dedicated member of our team, Ms. Liu, who left for family reasons. "Mother Liu" has been a committed and wonderful part of Little Red Scarf over the last year and a half and will be missed by staff and Little Red Scarf families alike. We would have loved for our time together to have been longer, but are so grateful for her efforts and wish her all the best.

Hepatitis B causes 80% of all primary liver cancer cases, and is considered the greatest health disparity affecting the Asian/Pacific Islander demographic.   As many as 1 in 10 Asian Americans and 1 in 20 of all people worldwide are 

chronically infected with hepatitis B.  Nearly 1 million infected individuals die every year. Because of this, Hepatitis B awareness is an issue the Asian American community cannot afford to ignore.

Stanford Asian Liver Center (ALC) is one organization that is fighting to eradicate Hepatitis B and has been a long-time partner of the Chao Foundation. This evening, we're further showing our support of their mission, through the LIVERight Telethon. We have pledged $50,000 to the event, and will be offering up to $50,000 in match funds for every dollar donated. The telethon, which is being held at Crowne Plaza Cabana Hotel, will be broadcast from 4:30-6:30pm on KTSF. Tune in to watch Mr. and Mrs. Chao present their generous donation and hear a brief interview with them. We look forward to supporting this important cause and to finding additional ways to help in the future.

We are always looking for projects and people who are trying to facilitate service learning in Asia. Today we had the pleasure of meeting with several recent graduates from some of China's top universities who are working in this field. During our conversation, we were able to present the Chao Foundation and its missions and services. We also discussed more generally how to generate interest in volunteerism among college students based on learnings from our East Villagers program. It was very encouraging to meet such young leaders that are enthusiastic about promoting a service culture in East Asia, and we are especially grateful to Wujing Harrison for connecting us with them!

With all of the exciting programs that we're beginning or continuously developing, we know it can be hard to keep up with us. At the same time, we are so passionate about the work that we're doing that we want to share it with everyone as best we can. In order to do that, we've started this blog, which we hope will provide at least once-weekly updates on related news and happenings. If you have any questions or want to learn more about any of the topics we discuss here, please feel free to leave us a comment, or send us a request on our "Contact Us" page. You can also subscribe to our RSS feed to automatically receive updates any time we provide them.

Thank you so much for your interest in the Chao Foundation and your support of our mission; we look forward to working with you to spread a spirit of philanthropy worldwide, one project at a time.