OneSky

Awarded:

2008

Issue Areas:

Early Childhood to Primary Education Economic Opportunity Livelihoods Women's and Girls' Education

Web:

onesky.org

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About the Organization

OneSky for all children (formerly Half the Sky) was created in 1998 to improve conditions for the many thousands of abandoned baby girls then languishing in China’s welfare institutions. By training over 40,000 caregivers, teachers, and foster parents to provide the nurturing care that is crucial for healthy development, OneSky has directly impacted the lives of more than 185,000 vulnerable children and their Orphanage Model is now China’s standard of care for institutionalized children. OneSky’s work within child welfare institutions taught them that the needs of young children are universal, regardless of circumstances. This prompted the organization to, in 2015, launch a program dedicated to transforming the lives of the millions of children under the age of six who are left behind in rural villages when their parents migrate to distant cities for work. The OneSky Village Model offers family skills training, early childhood programs, and community engagement activities to help re-energize disintegrating communities in 46 rural villages. In 2017, OneSky expanded beyond China with the opening of the first Early Learning Center focused on providing nurturing care for the young children of migrant workers in Vietnam as part of a new Factory Model. This year the organization is beginning a new caregiver training program in Mongolia and opening a global training center in Hong Kong..

Ambition for Change

OneSky envisions a time when every child—no matter how humble her/his beginnings—receives nurturing early care and education that promotes healthy brain development and gives them the best chance for a bright future.

Path to Scale

OneSky unlocks the potential of the world’s most vulnerable young children by teaching the adults in their lives how to provide early nurture and education and by building local capacity through a Training of Trainers approach that helps communities achieve lasting wide-scale impact.

Skoll Awardee

Jenny Bowen

Founder, OneSky

A former screenwriter and filmmaker, Jenny Bowen founded Half the Sky (now OneSky) in 1998 to give back to China, her adopted daughters’ home country, and to the many orphaned and abandoned children then languishing behind institutional walls. OneSky is now a trusted government partner that has helped China reshape its entire child welfare system and designed scalable programs for the millions of children left behind in rural villages. Today OneSky is bringing all it has learned in China to other Asian countries, starting in Vietnam with scalable programs that address the needs of the children of factory workers in industrial zones.

In 2008, Jenny received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship in. In that same year, Jenny was the only American chosen by popular vote to carry the Olympic Torch on Chinese soil, and Half the Sky became one of only a handful of foreign NGOs officially recognized and legally registered by the Chinese government. That registration was one of the few registrations renewed in 2017 under China’s new foreign NGO legislation.

Among other honors, Jenny received the American Chamber of Commerce’s Women of Influence Entrepreneur of the Year Award, its Nonprofit Leader of the Year Award, the Purpose Prize, the Jefferson Award, and the International Women’s Forum/Trusteeship Meredith McCrae Empowerment Award. She serves on China’s National Committee for Orphans and Disabled Children and on the Expert Consultative Committee for Beijing Normal University’s Philanthropy Research Institute. She is the author of the memoir, Wish You Happy Forever: What China’s Orphans Taught Me About Moving Mountains, published by Harper Collins.

See Jenny Bowen's profile

Impact & Accomplishments

OneSky has trained over 40,,000 caregivers who have impacted the lives of over 185,000 children. Their training program has reached orphanages in every province in China. A three-year randomized control study of OneSky’s program for left-behind children in rural Chinese villages completed by external evaluators in 2018 showed program interventions were effective in changing parenting behaviors and improving child outcomes. In participating villages, caregivers are adopting more nurturing and responsive approaches to caring for children, resulting in fewer children experiencing abuse and neglect. Children in treatment villages scored higher on development assessments, in particular on the domains of gross-motor skills, personal-social skills, and cultural knowledge than children in control villages.
OneSky will open the doors of the P. C. Lee OneSky Global Centre for Early Childhood Development in Hong Kong this year. The Center will provide high quality early childhood care and education services for vulnerable young children in Hong Kong’s Sham Shui Po district as well as serve as OneSky’s hub for caregiver training programs across the city and the region.

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