OneSky

Awarded:

2008

Issue Areas:

Academia 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 believes that every child deserves nurturing care and quality early education. The organization partners with communities and governments in Asia to provide young children in vulnerable circumstances with responsive care and safe, nurturing learning environments by training, mentoring, and supporting the adult caregivers in their lives. Since 1998, OneSky has been working to meet the early childhood care and education needs of individual children, while also helping transform systems of care in Asia so that all children can thrive. To date, OneSky has trained 116,502 professional and family caregivers to improve the lives of over 394,390 children in mainland China, Vietnam, Mongolia and Hong Kong SAR.

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

Mainland China OneSky for all children was created in 1998 to improve conditions for the many thousands of abandoned baby girls then languishing in China’s welfare institutions. What began as a pilot to train caregivers in two Chinese welfare institutions grew into a program that has scaled nationwide, transforming the standard of care in several thousand orphanages across the country. 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 launch a program dedicated to transforming the lives of children under the age of six who were left behind in rural villages when their parents migrated to distant cities for work and to develop medical care homes for institutionalized children with complex medical needs. To date, OneSky has reached more than 300,000 children in China and is using lessons learned in that country to improve systems in other parts of Asia.
Vietnam In Vietnam, OneSky works to improve outcomes for children of low-income migrant factory workers living in industrial zones. The OneSky Early Learning Centre in Da Nang provides comprehensive early learning programs for these children and acts as a national demonstration site for best practices in early childhood care and education. OneSky also trains independent childcare providers to provide quality care and early education and has partnered with Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training to draft the national Guidelines for Implementing the Early Childhood Education Program for Independent Childcare Centers (ICCs). The organization has reached almost 53,000 children in Vietnam since 2017.
Mongolia Onesky’s Family Skills Training program in Mongolia is delivered directly by OneSky’s training team at the organization’s Family Center for low-resourced migrant families living in the country’s ger districts as well as at public kindergartens. The OneSky Monoglia team is also working to improve the quality of independent childcare in that country. Since 2018, OneSky has reached 9,574 children in Mongolia.

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