Posted By admin on March 4, 2009

The Secret Campaign to Save China’s Baby Girls
by Roderick Benns

Jim Garrow still remembers the day eight years ago when one of his
assistants was softly crying in a corner of the Bethune Institute’s office
in China. Her sister had phoned the night before with devastating news
– she had found out that her sister’s husband had demanded their baby
girl be smothered to make way for a possible son.

Garrow, who had been working in China since 1995, couldn’t believe his ears.
“I said to my upset assistant at that time that whatever needs to be done to save this baby, we’ll make it happen. Anything to change the outcome, no matter the cost.”

News of Garrow’s intervention went out to all the schools within the Bethune Institute and others came forward in the same predicament. Not that the Bethune Institute was ever intended to be connected with such a campaign. It was – and still is — set up as a means of earning one’s English as a Second Language certificate, Early Childhood Education certificate or Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) certification. It now numbers 168 branches with 6,000 employees across their schools.

After Garrow’s intervention, contacts were made with some Chinese officials who were sympathetic to the cause. People who knew how to navigate the Chinese system were quietly hired. Ultimately babies were delivered to the three official Chinese orphanages and put up for adoption. In its first year alone (in 2000), 187 baby girls were saved from China’s ruthless one baby-
per-couple policy.

Today, that number stands at over 24,000 baby girls saved.

The Pink Pagoda Campaign was born, now boasting 140 employees.
Garrow points out boys are much more preferred to girls in China because of
ingrained notions of the importance of lineage. If a woman happens to birth an infant girl, there are millions of families who are not satisfied with such an outcome.

“However, it’s illegal to give your baby up for adoption. It is seen as the family’s responsibility to raise the child, not the state. There is no alternative like there is in western nations,” Garrow said from his Guelph home.

The Canadian businessman and education specialist said the Pink Pagoda Campaign “gets the babies to an orphanage run by the Chinese government and the babies are then added to the regular population.”
“Then they have a chance to be adopted – we’re basically the initial gatherers of the babies,” Garrow explains.

Categories: Press
Tags: