ACE: Arts Charity Extravaganza

Last weekend Andrew and I had the pleasure of helping out with a huge event here in Shanghai called ACE (Arts Charity Extravaganza). It was an event put on entirely by youth (mainly from the many international schools in the area) to raise money for a charity of their choice. This year the chosen charity was Shanghai Healing Home, which is a new orphange that will be offering pre- and post-surgical care for orphaned Chinese infants with cleft lip. (If you want to find out more, you can check out the website: http://shanghaihealinghome.com/)

This picture if of James and Christina Weidner... they are the ones opening the SHH and were giving an info-speech at ACE about it. What's crazy is that they have 4 kids (7, 4,2, and 9 months) of their own, the youngest of which was born in China last summer. They are from New Orleans but have a real heart for China so plan to be here for the rest of their lives. We've been getting to know them; they're a great family!

Anyways, the ACE event was held in a huge loft and featured a fashion show, art gallery (with silent auction), food, live music, dancing, etc. I've been trying to teach my own students about serving, and thought this would be a great way for them to get involved. (Okay, they also need 30 volunteer hours to graduate from the BC program, so I think that might have been a pretty big motivator for a lot of them to sign up). I was expecting maybe 5-10 kids to sign up as volunteers, but was really surprised when nearly all of our 48 students volunteered- isn't that fantastic?! Some of them were even there 2 days before the event, setting up chairs, cleaning the floors, doing silly meaneal tasks that just needed to be done. On the day of, they had a great time though.

Here's Henry, Jay, and Kerry serving drinks.

Marvin and Linda serving food.

Justin, David, Jim, and Greg handing out programs at the door.

A dance performed by some international school students. The boy at the very front of the V was Korean and the CRAZIEST dancer I'd ever seen. He was so good I thought he was a girl (he looked pretty girly too!). He was like Gumby bustin' it out. I took a video and will show you guys when we're home this summer... this is something everyone has to see... all the girls in the audience were screaming like they were at a JT concert or something... you can hear that on the video too.

Tim, Terry, and Frank setting up a sign for the silent auction.

And this little sweetheart is Abby, the 4-year-old daughter of James and Christina. I had just french-braided her hair before ACE started and she wanted me to take a picture of her... one of many, but this is the cutest one to show you guys. She didn't want to wear her sweater (like her mom had asked her to), so I convinced her that it would look pretty cool if I tied it around her neck like a cape. She thought she was super-woman after that!

On the following Monday I asked my students what they had thought of ACE. One boy responded, "There were many beautiful girls there." When I asked them what the best part of the whole event was, they ALL replied, "The pizza and the nuts." Ha ha, not what I was expecting!