Congratulations to our interns, who made the post-Thanksgiving charity dinner a big success! We raised over $1200 total that night, more than enough to fully fund the remainder of our children featured on The School Fund's website, and even contribute extra funds toward special projects like those listed on our new website. We're so proud of our interns and can't wait to see the achievements that come from future projects!

The Chao Foundation team got together today at Nola in downtown Pal Alto for some delicious Southern cooking. Amidst mouthfuls of jambalaya, shrimp & grits, strip steak, fried calamari, beignets and bread pudding, we discussed some of our recent  progress as well as our upcoming agenda items.

First and foremost, the Chao Foundation is continuing to work on the creation and development of Transparent Fish Fund (aka TFish Fund). Although TFish Fund originated under the Chao Foundation's umbrella, it has recently become a separate and public 501(3)c. The advantages of this formal separation will allow TFish Fund to achieve one of its primary missions: to fundraise for promising but struggling East Asian NGOs. By gaining the ability to solicit public donations, TFish Fund will be able to further its aim to promote transparency and financial accountability within the NGOs that it carefully selects to partner with. We have been working on a new TFish website and hope to have it available within the next few weeks.

Another ongoing Chao Foundation project is being spearheaded by our high school interns. Our interns have been working hard across the last few weeks to organize a fundraiser for some of the TFish children on The School Fund's website. The charity dinner will be held at Lord's Grace Christian Church in Mountain View from 6-9pm on Saturday, November 26. Tickets are $15, which includes a sit-down meal, audience education, and various activities designed to raise awareness of causes in East Asia. All proceeds will be donated to The School Fund. For more information, or to attend, please visit the event's Facebook page.

Little Red Scarf reached 602 surgeries in October! And, we received this encouraging letter from an LRS child family member:

Dear Mr. Yun,

I am Li Zimeng’s father. My child is all right now. Initially, we had planned to return to Lanzhou for a checkup, but now because my wife is ill, we have decided not to. We had a Color Doppler ultrasound for Zimeng at the local hospital and the doctor said that she is healthy now. We are very appreciative of Little Red Scarf. I will tell Zimeng when she is older that Little Red Scarf helped her overcome the disease when she was young. You have very kind hearts to help us and our entire family is grateful to you. Happy National Day!


Hearing news from families is so encouraging and we continue to wish Zimeng all the best in her recovery!

We were so excited to receive an email from our partner, Rural China Education Foundation (RCEF) that included this video. The video showcases some of the wonderful work they're doing and is a great testament to the work that they are doing in the field. Watch as one of RCEF's teachers takes an opportunity to teach the children about something that they had proactively expressed interest in. We guarantee you'll be moved! 

We were invited by our former partner, Seanan Fong, to attend this year's Community Health Symposium at Stanford. Seanan had taken a brief hiatus from his undergraduate studies late last year and during his time off, traveled extensively through China to document our work with Little Red Scarf. Last Thursday evening, he had the opportunity to present some of that work to his peers through a poster at the conference, as well as through his brief talk. In his 7-minute presentation, he took the audience through the story of Little Jiao, who he followed from pre-op to post-op. He also shared his experience interacting with people from rural areas of China and introduced the Chao Foundation's Service Scholar program. We hope that Seanan's experience will inspire other college students to get involved with work in less industrialized areas. We are grateful to Seanan for the effort he put into raising awareness for Little Red Scarf's work and congratulate him on his success at the symposium!