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In the summer of 1997 Jenny Bowen and her husband adopted a Chinese girl, Maya, a toddler from the Guangzhou Social Welfare Institution.

When Maya first came to the family, she displayed a lot of the effects of institutionalization - poor health, lack of expression and detachment.

But after just one year of individual attention, love and nurturing, the little girl was transformed.

One day when the family was having a party, Bowen, standing in the kitchen and looking out the window into the garden, saw her adopted daughter playing with her friends, full of joy, absolutely like a normal child.

"I thought I was watching a miracle."

That very day she made the decision to do something for the children who grow up in orphanages.

The name of the organization - Half the Sky - came to her right away.

She knew of the Chinese adage - "Women hold up half the sky" - and the fact that most of the healthy children living in China's institutions are girls.

"So it seemed to be a right name for our foundation," Bowen recalled.

Five American families who had adopted Chinese children joined Bowen and Half the Sky Foundation was born in 1998.

With the help of the China Population Welfare Foundation in Beijing, Bowen visited a couple of children's welfare institutions in the summer of 1999 and met many directors of institutions, experts, educators and local officials.

Later that year Half the Sky got the nod from China's Ministry of Civil Affairs to try a one-year pilot programme in Changzhou in Jiangsu Province and Hefei in Anhui Province.

The pilot programmes proved to be a remarkable success that expanded quickly across the country. Four new centres were built every year during the following years.

All of the centres were built by volunteers, often adoptive parents, who wanted to do something for the children remaining in the institutions.

Many of the parents, who came to China to equip some indoor and outdoor spaces in some local institutions, brought their adoptive children back with them.

It was incredible for the children and the experience left them with great memories, said Bowen.

So far 17,000 families from all over the world have joined the foundation.

With the rapid development of the programme, Jenny Bowen often spends four months every year in China.

Though she knew a little bit about Chinese culture, growing up in San Francisco which is home to one of North America's largest Chinese communities, Bowen realized how much more there was to know.

"The more often I came, the more I realized how little I knew about China."

A former screenwriter and film director, she began her motion picture career working for Francis Ford Coppola after several years working in the theatre.

In addition to writing screenplays for major Hollywood producers, Jenny Bowen was writer-director on several independent films that examined social issues.

She once thought the foundation would be part-time work but it quickly grew into something that consumed her life.

Yet she has no regrets.

"What I do is what I'm meant to do."

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