$2.9 Million Goes To Adoption Agency

A $2.9 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will dramatically change the work a Seattle-area adoption agency has been doing with disabled Chinese children.

"It significantly changes not the mission of what we do, but the capacity to which we can respond to the need," said Janice Neilson, executive director of the World Association for Children and Parents (WACAP).

For the Gates foundation, the donation, which was to be announced today, is the latest in a series of grants that includes $750 million the Microsoft founder and his wife gave to the Global Fund for Children's Vaccines, $50 million for the Maternal Mortality Reduction Program and $50 million a year for the Gates Millennium Scholars program for minority students.

But to the children's association, it's huge.

For 10 years the Renton-based agency has helped Americans adopt abandoned Chinese babies. It has also run a program in China's poor Henan Province to provide education, medical care and rehabilitation to disabled orphans and children.

Doctors, therapists and others in the Puget Sound area have volunteered to provide services at the Luoyang Child Welfare Institute. Donations to the World Association for Children and Parents bought everything from an operating room to artificial limbs.

The Gates money will fund a five-year program and expand the services to two other orphanages in Henan, Neilson said.

During the first three years, the association will help rebuild

the Kaifeng Rehabilitation Center for Handicapped Children and create a similar facility in the Anyang Child Welfare Institute.

In the last two years of the grant, the agency hopes to install video-conferencing equipment that will allow doctors in the Northwest to consult with Chinese counterparts at the three facilities.

"WACAP has been a shining light in the lives of thousands of children with special needs," William H. Gates, co-chairman of the foundation and father of the Microsoft founder, said in a statement. "We are pleased to support WACAP's efforts to provide all children with a happy, healthy childhood."

The agency's work in China began 10 years ago when it started helping Americans adopt abandoned babies. In 1995, Neilson first visited Luoyang and saw a cold, crowded, run-down orphanage.

Since then, the agency has helped the local orphanage director make a new facility into a magnet for disabled children in the poor, industrial city.

On a trip in March, a team of medical volunteers from the agency saw more than 100 disabled children.

Neilson said Chinese officials were surprised to see how many disabled children had been hidden away in Luoyang homes.

A Chinese official told Neilson recently, "We have a responsibility to respond to the citizens," and the agency was invited to expand its services within Henan, she said.

A delegation will visit China in January to discuss the Gates grant with government officials, tour the two new Henan sites where the agencywill work and visit other facilities around the country.