Name: Martin & Sue Wakeling
Living in: Guiyang, Guizhou
From: Croydon, Surrey

“Each day in China is an adventure.  You never know what the day might hold!”

Martin and Sue Wakeling first came to China in 1995 as English teachers.  After teaching English for five years they set up a project in Guizhou to help children with special educational needs.  The project trains the whole community to help these children and to offer support to families in order to prevent abandonment.  They believe it is particularly important to take a holistic approach to educating and helping children.

Since starting the project, they have run two training programmes and although they rely heavily on experts from overseas to provide some of the training they have recruited five trained teachers from the local area.  The programme has expanded from only a couple of families at the beginning to now involving around 30 children.  These children have a range of needs including cerebral palsy, visual impairment, learning difficulties and autism. Half of them are orphans who are being fostered and the other half are from families in the community.  The children, divided into four groups, attend sessions twice a week. 

Martin and Sue consider it a privilege to be working here in China passing on their skills to the local community.