ROH'S FEBRUARY 2009 SORTING PARTY 
        On February 28th, more than 220 volunteers from China and abroad as well as international schools students and local companies' staff joined the ROH Sorting Party at Yew Chung International School, Gubei area. On Friday 27th, as they have been doing for the last few years, our faithful sponsor Santa Fe Relocation Company and their skillful team worked behind the scene to load and unload the donated items from our 12 locations in Puxi and Pudong. For the second time, Cafe du Monde provided 200 yummy hamburgers and vegetarian set sandwiches while Coca Cola Company donated 200 can drinks.

         Special thanks to Luke Watson, the representative from YCIS who stood in the gap with his team of enthusiastic teenagers (Paul, Michael, Alexia to name a few) who came prepared with their PA system and upbeat music to keep everyone in the mood for work. All came early to assure that the YCIS Cafeteria was up to par to hold this quarterly event. Volunteers contributed to a festive atmosphere to sort, pack, and sew bags while others stepped in willingly and sometimes without prior notice to do whatever needed to be done such as registration, serving lunch, organizing the bazaar and cleaning up.

         This time around, ROH decided to use Dacron bags commonly known in China as snakeskin bags. One of the main reasons is that unlike relocation boxes, the bags are widely used in China to ship any kind of goods from clothe material to rice and even industrial parts. In addition to being easy to work with, these environmentally friendly bags helped to reduce our costs, are easy to work with and can be recycled by our destinations. Now, ROH can channel donations towards logistics instead of buying boxes and related stationeries. So, without much ado, a group of skilled ladies which reminded us of a knitting club pioneered and spearheaded a sewing corner for all to chat, meet new people while avoiding poking each other.

         Another novelty was a bazaar where volunteers could shop. Clothes, Teddy bears, necklaces, odd items found excited new owners. The funds raised through this initiative will cover some of the transportation costs. Thank you for your contribution.

         All in all, volunteers packed 400 bags and boxes. Of these, one hundred were sent to children of elementary schools in Qinghai Province. The remaining bags were shipped to Henan where they will be distributed in the next few weeks to under-privileged villagers and returnee migrant workers. Finally, an orphanage in Anhui will be the recipient of a small amount of children clothes, toys and bicycles.

         Last but not least, ROH sincerely appreciates the Core of volunteers who in spite of their busy schedule saw the urgency and the need to prepare for this event by answering requests, keeping websites update, connecting with volunteers, researching snakeskin bags, organizing the pickups, providing contacts for lunch and coordinating the trucks to reach their destinations.

         Take a few moments to look at some insight into the party and download your pics at these websites:

         www.flickr.com/photos/riverofhearts
         riverofhearts.org
         www.communitycenter.cn/charities

        If you would like to be involved in this project let us know, and we can discuss in what capacity you could help.

Best regards,
Daniel, Margaret and Mark Bourne
and the CORE team (Cat Chan, Murphy, John Fan, Washiela, Lily Jiang)
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