OneSky (formerly Half the Sky Foundation) is an international NGO that is working toward large-scale, practical application of its innovative yet proven early childhood intervention models that can be adapted to meet challenges in diverse situations wherever young children live in adversity, particularly in development countries.
To date, OneSky has trained 14,000 caregivers to provide life-changing care for more than 130,000 children. Since its founding, OneSky has partnered with government at every level and worked with a local NGO to implement its models and to oversee their eventual rollout to scale.
Mission Statement
OneSky envisions a time when all the world's children are valued and considered a precious human resource worthy of investment. We create and implement simple, replicable model early learning programs designed to unlock the vast hidden potential of vulnerable at-risk young children through nurturing responsive care.
Foundations Early Learning Center Video
Background and History
1997
Jenny and Richard Bowen adopted their daughter, Maya, a toddler from a welfare institution in southern China. They received a first-hand education in early childhood development and the trauma of institutionalization: she suffered from both physical and cognitive developmental delays. But after just one year of individual attention, love and nurture, Maya was transformed.
1998
Half the Sky Foundation ("HTS") - named for the Chinese adage, "Women hold up half the sky" was founded to train staff to provide family-like nurturing care for orphaned children.
2000
HTS's first pilot programs were launched to evaluate whether infants and preschoolers living in institutions under the care of trained, loving nannies working in Half the Sky's Infant Nurture and Little Sisters Preschool Program would thrive as they do in families. The pilot programs found that children living in institutions did thrive under the patient, loving care of trained nannies and preschool teachers. Listless babies learned to coo, to laugh, to cuddle, and to follow the sounds of their nannies' voices. Withdrawn, sullen preschoolers learned to draw and plant sunflowers, ride bikes, negotiate with their peers for toys, and greet their teachers with open arms.
2002
HTS started its Big Sisters Program (now called Youth Services) to provide individualized learning opportunities and mentoring for older children growing up in Chinese institutions - everything from language classes, computer training, music and art lessons, vocational education, and even college tuition for those who have defied long odds to pursue their higher education dreams.
2003
HTS celebrated its 5th anniversary by hosting a national conference on nurture and education in China's welfare institutions in Hefei, Anhui. With support from the Ford Foundation, Half the Sky published For the Children, a teacher and nanny training manual for its signature approach (developed by Chinese and Western educators) to providing high-quality, nurturing care for institutionalized children. For the Children is distributed free-of-charge to welfare institutions across China.
2005
Half the Sky opened its first Family Village (now called Special Families), providing permanent, loving, two-parent homes for children whose physical and developmental challenges mean they are unlikely to be adopted.
2006
In partnership with the Henan Province Bureau of Social Welfare, HTS implemented a program to address the special needs of children orphaned by AIDS.
2007
China's Ministry of Civil Affairs invited Half the Sky to participate in its ambitious "Blue Sky" plan to dramatically improve care for orphans all over the country. Half the Sky was honored to accept the challenge of bringing nurturing care to social welfare institutions in all 31 provinces and municipalities.
2009
HTS started operating its new China Care Home to provide nurturing and specialized medical care for orphaned infants and toddlers in Beijing.
2010
Director-General Wang Zhenyao, head of the welfare department at MCA commits to improving care for orphaned children: "Like Half the Sky programs, we must now begin from the interests of the children. We must raise the standards of care for all children and Half the Sky commits to gradually turn the responsibility for operating the programs it has established over to the Chinese so it can eventually become an organization that creates sustainable models and provides the training and mentoring to implement them.
In addition, HTS's government partners asked HTS to be responsible for bringing their orphanage model to all 337 children's welfare institutions in China, a request that led to the launch of the Rainbow Program the following year.
2011
The groundbreaking public/NGO/private partnership, the Rainbow Program, was launched at the Great Hall of the People on Children's Day. The Rainbow Program is changing the face of orphan care all over China by teaching a nation of child welfare workers how to provide consistent family-like nurturing care and early education.
2012
It was always Half the Sky's intention to shift financial and operational responsibility for work in China over to the Chinese. By 2012, thanks to China's improved economy, a fledging philanthropy sector was beginning to emerge. Thanks to Chunhui Bo'Ai Children's Foundation ("Chunhui Children"), HTS's Chinese sister organization registered as a charity in Beijing that year, caring Chinese can help their most vulnerable citizens through an organization as committed to financial transparency as Half the Sky.
2015
HTS became OneSky and launched its scalable OneSky Village Model designed to ensure that the 23 million children under seven years old left behind in impoverished rural villages while their parents work in faraway cities receive nurturing, responsive care during their most critical years.
Programs
OneSky's responsive, child-centered approach focuses on nurturing the whole child. It draws from the Reggio Emilia approach to enhancing each individual child's development and from local education standards. For example, in China, children are required to learn about the arts, the sciences, language, social development and health. The goal is to prepare children to enter society at an intellectual and social level with their peers while surrounding them with a stimulating, healthy emotional environment.
The Orphanage Model
This model has become China's national standard for orphan care. At its heart are three simple, replicable programs that offer institutionalized children the responsive care and loving attention they need in order to thrive:
Infant Nurture - Women from the local community are trained to provide nurturing, responsive care and stimulation for orphaned babies and toddlers. Attentive to the tremendous gains infants make in the early years of life - physically, emotionally, socially and intellectually - each nanny is assigned 3-4 babies and treats them as her very own.
Preschools - Experienced early childhood educators are taught a unique and progressive curriculum that blends responsive care and some elements of the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education with local kindergarten standards. The program is designed to prepare the children to develop intellectual curiosity and a love of learning, succeed in community schools, and attain the positive sense of self so often missing in institutionalized children.
Special Families - Married couples who have already raised a family but still have room in their hearts are recruited from the local community to provide permanent loving foster homes for children whose physical, emotional or cognitive challenges are likely to preclude their adoption. Children who would otherwise spend their lives in institutional care, grow up knowing the love of a family while also receiving the special care that our early intervention programs provide.
The Village Model
This model is offering a low-cost approach to mitigating the damage to children left behind in rural villages by parents who have migrated away for work.
Family Skills - Parenting skills and responsive care training, benefitting infants, toddlers, and their preschool-aged siblings, is delivered to primary caregivers through group trainings at the OneSky Family Center and via weekly home visits. The focus is on providing nurturing care in daily life, with an emphasis on attachment and bonding, brain development and stimulation, and on fostering early communication.
ECD Centers - An early learning center is provided for all children in the village, ages 3-6, irrespective of the family's ability to pay. The child-centered curriculum emphasizes using responsive care to improve cognitive, social, emotional development and school readiness.
Community Engagement - This critical component is geared toward strengthening now disintegrating rural communities and providing a nurturing home for young children despite parental absence by offering trainer-facilitated village gatherings, monthly community projects (community garden, field trips and treasure hunts with preschoolers, etc.), and cooperative childcare to give weary grandparents regular respite.
Bringing OneSky's Programs to Scale
National Training Plan
The National Training Plan (called the Rainbow Program in China), a groundbreaking effort to reach every orphaned child by training caregivers all over the country, was launched on Children's Day, 2011 at the Great Hall of the People.
OneSky and our government partners hold introductory trainings (more theory than practice) in a province. Then our Child Development Experts follow up with in-depth trainings (more practice than theory) in the same province.
Seed Centers
OneSky supports institutions that have received Rainbow Training, are committed to providing child-centered care and need some help getting their own programs off the ground.
E-Learning
OneSky has created an online community, 1jiaren.org, for caregivers and administrators to discuss best practice childcare, view training videos, and expand their knowledge by taking e-learning courses.
Disaster Relief
In 2008, HTS provided relief for 98 institutions affected by the snow disaster in early 2008, and for Dujiangyan, Sichuan province when the May earthquake hit Wenchuan. In Dujiangyan, OneSky set up "Big Tops," giant tents with toys and games where children could be children again and where psychological mentoring was available for them.
ChunHui Children
In late 2012, OneSky's sister organization, Chunhui Children, was registered as a charity in Beijing so generous Chinese citizens, corporations and individuals can support a charity dedicated to providing response care for the country's most vulnerable children and to financial transparency.
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