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Chili cookoff funds go to a good cause

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Parent Category: I ♥ Nanjing

Category: Community features

Created on Monday, 11 April 2011 14:53

Published on Monday, 11 April 2011 14:53

Written by Bjoern

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Aanjing's first International Chili Cook Off that was organized by the community last year to find out who could make the best chili in town. It began as a forum conversation about soup, which evolved into an 11-page thread that got the community together for a good cause.

Surprisingly the event was won by a team of vegans….a fact that still seems unbelievable to some of the meat loving participants today ;).

...the event created a winning situation for everyone involved...Anyhow the main reason for the event was to create a win-win-win situation. Enhance the community, get people together for a party, have a food competition with live cooking and support a local charity. In this case we choose Hopeful Hearts. 16.000 RMB were realised for the good cause, a fantastic result!

Last week I got a letter from Hopeful hearts describing what they did with the money so I want to let you know what you did together.

Letter Text:

“Thank you for organizing the Chili Cook-off in November, benefiting Hopeful Hearts. Your wonderful donation of 16000 RMB paid for a little boy’s operation. His name is Wang Youheng and he’s 5 years old.

Wang Youheng is the only child of very young parents , who are poor farmers. He was diagnosed with a ventricular Septal Defect, a condition where there are holes in the wall between the two ventricles. Blood from the left ventricle, which is the most powerful chamber of the heart, is pumped under high pressure across the VSD and into the lung. This results in the blood vessels of the lungs becoming thick walled and hard early in life. To complicate matters for this little boy, he also suffers with Downs Syndrome and he is also unable to speak. He can say only Momma and Pappa.

His mom was eighteen when she had him and didn’t know how to properly care for him. She told us that his nutrition was very poor as she didn’t know what to feed him or how to care for her child. When he was a baby she fed him only powdered milk. Needless to say this little fellow has been in poor condition for most of his young life.

When asked how they came to know about Hopeful Hearts, they explained that they heard about our charity on the television – the interview at the Chili Cook-off!

The people in their village see a country doctor who was able to put them in contact with Dr. Lan Lily who advised them to contact Amity and Hopeful Hearts.

Wang Youheng was admitted to Chengdu Cardiology Hospital on February 25th and received his operation by march 4th. During his operation the doctor found an additional defect and operated on both.

Our volunteers in Chengdu visited Wang Youheng and his family in Hospital on Monday the 7th and his father in particular was so grateful to Hopeful Hearts and their part in saving the life of his child. He recovered well and was released to go home with his family on Friday 11th.

So on behalf of Wang Youheng, his family and all the volunteers at Hopeful hearts we offer our most sincere thanks for organizing this event. Without it I am fairly certain we would never have reached this child and been able to save his precious life.

Sincerely
Sarah Carrick – Hopeful Hearts Nanjing

From the author

I would like to thank again everybody that helped in organizing event, helped with the sponsoring or simply participated in it.

I think it was a great success for everybody and great fun. Not so difficult to change the world a little bit for the better if people work together towards it.

It was certainly not the last event. I will set up the 2nd International Nanjing Chili Cook-off later this year and I am thinking about a few other plans as well ☺

Thanks again
Bjoern