Dedicated to helping others
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Michelle Teope-Shen still remembers the emaciated figure of Zhang Yong, an 8-year-old boy with congenital heart disease, when she saw him for the first time in a shabby flat 10 years ago.
Looking like a 5-year-old child, Zhang still had his baby teeth because of his disease. The boy was going to die unless he had an operation very soon.
Supported by the Filipino community in Shanghai, Teope-Shen helped raise the money for the operation.
The last time Teope-Shen saw him he was playing basketball — something Zhang never imagined he would be able to do when he was a boy.
“This was my first case of helping a child with congenital heart disease. It opened my eyes to what the work meant — it’s not just the child that you help but also the family because you lighten up the burden on the parents, ” Teope-Shen says.
The Filipino, a Changning resident, is now the chairwoman of Beacon of Love, a non-governmental organization dedicated to helping save lives and promoting public awareness of congenital heart disease.
In 2002, a group of expatriate women banded together and hosted a small charity bazaar to help raise funds for sick children who needed heart surgery. Later they founded Beacon of Love.
Now the group has approximately 25 members, mainly expatriates who speak fluent Mandarin. In partnership with the Shanghai Children’s Health Foundation, the group has financed 221 life-saving surgeries and raised millions through its annual Charity Carnival event.
When Zhang’s mother came to Teope-Shen’s office seeking help, his father, a construction worker, had already given up since the cost of the operation was well beyond what the family could afford. Zhang’s father earned 800 yuan (US$125) a month, the family’s only income at the time.
The boy’s mother couldn’t work because she was busy caring for him, including carrying him on her back to school every day. Zhang was too weak to climb up and down the five flights of stairs to get to their apartment so his mother would carry him.
“The saddest part was when the mother told me her husband blamed her for the condition of the child,” Teope-Shen says. “She was in tears. And he said to her ‘I have been trained in the military and I work in construction. I am such a strong man, why did you give me such a child’?”
After Zhang had surgery, his mother found a part-time job and the family was better off.
Touched by Zhang’s case, Teope-Shen first joined the organization as a volunteer. It never occurred to her that she would go so far and become the charity’s chairwomen.
“I just follow the flow of the water and it led me to do more charity work,” she says.
In the last 10 years, Teope-Shen and her team members also helped children in an orphanage with congenital heart disease.
“A child’s operation costs about 30,000 yuan and it is not easy to raise funds. But what I can only say is that I think you have to be realistic about your expectations. If you can raise so much money to just save one kid — it’s good enough,” Teope-Shen says.
“Each year we have our numbers and the numbers have been rising. Today we would be able to save 30 to 45 kids in a year. And just 30 to 45 kids’ lives are a lot in a year. That’s also 30 to 45 families,” she adds.
Today, Beacon of Love is expanding its efforts to western and southern parts of China including Yunnan Province and Tibet Autonomous Region. They make an annual trip to visit the children they have helped and select some cases to bring to Shanghai.
“We do the follow-up work to see if the child has recovered,’ she says. “But after one year, it’s beyond our mission and objective and resources to do more. We have to concentrate on helping other kids.”
In 2000, Teope-Shen moved to Shanghai along with her husband and two children. She had been an architect and the project manager on the construction of the Grand Hotel Beijing in 1987. But to take care of the family, Teope-Shen became a housewife. With more free time, she became involved in charity work to enrich her life.
She joined the Filipino Community Association in Shanghai, which led her to cooperating with Beacon of Love. Now she is also the president of the Filipino Community Association.
Residing in one of the city’s most international communities — Gubei area of Changning District — Teope-Shen has recently become a chamber counselor of the Gubei Civic Center representing expatriate views.
“My passion for bridging Eastern and Western cultures led me to become a counselor for the residents chamber,” she says.
It’s a hectic life — juggling her responsibilities as a parent, her work with Beacon of Love, heading the Filipino Community Association and working with the Gubei center, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I have a passion to help people. I find being helpful to others very enriching,” she says. “I know it’s a thankless job. Without the passion, I would never have done it for so long. But I do more — there are things around me that inspire me to keep going.”
Also, as president of the Filipino Community Association, Teope-Shen organizes events for Christmas and other occasions each year.
“My role is to get the community together,” she says.
Together with the Filipino consulate, she has initiated many other charity activities — raising money when a typhoon hits the Philippines and funds to help orphanages in Shanghai.
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