Service
| The Service Committee identifies and selects special projects and needs for which COGS can provide support. Most are multi-year projects, and church members visit 2 – 4 projects a year.
Spring Bud Program – Education for girls from poor rural families throughout China, a project with the All China Women’s Federation. The Spring Bud program enable rural girls to continue with their education, and has recently begun to fund vocational training, which will provide young women with greater opportunities when they leave school.  March 2007 Shi Du School – Food, electricity and warm clothes for children in a rural school. Shi Du School is in a very poor mountainous area two hours drive from Beijing in Hebei province. As the children need to walk a long way to get to school, a winter lunch program was established and attendance has improved.  November 2006 Golden Key Centre – Support for blind and visually-impaired children and adults. Beijing-based Golden Key provides educational materials and training to teachers and visually-impaired children in remote and poor areas, enabling the children to attend their local school. The center trains masseurs, enabling blind and visually-impaired people to lead independent lives, prints Braille materials and publishes the only Braille magazine for blind children in China. Members of COGS congregation also volunteer at the center, helping with website design, translation, administration and teaching English.  November 2006 Evergreen – Health, education and agricultural work in Shanxi province. Evergreen helps communities develop through its programs. COGS sells hand-cut paper cards produced by very poor families under one of Evergreen’s newest programs. COGS members also provide financial support and offer their homes to volunteer workers for holiday breaks. Pengcheng School for the Mentally Challenged The school, located in Jiangsu province, is a model of compassionate education and therapy for developmentally-disabled children, who might otherwise miss out on schooling. Its students have graduated to jobs and independent lives.  June 2007 Xian – Shaanxi Bible College Shaanxi Bible College trains pastors for north western China and has over 90 students. It plans to expand so it can meet demand for more classes. |