'Foreigners always like it here, although Chinese people usually find it a bit informal' says Meng Weina, showing us around the somewhat ramshackle courtyard house that accommodates six young people with mental handicaps and the offices of Beijing Huiling. Two satellite homes, in Andingmen and Tian Tan, also provide round the clock care for mentally handicapped youngsters aged 12-26, in a family style setting.

 

There is no meeting room in Huiling, so we sit in the courtyard to talk, frequently interrupted by stray residents wanting to join the fun and, at one point, by a delegation of other foreign visitors.

 

Ms. Meng is perhaps China's best- known civil society activist and advocate for children and young adults with special needs.

 

Unlike many who have striven to create new kinds of service out of the vacuum of state provision, she was not motivated by any personal connection with disability. Rather, she describes herself twenty years ago as a person of passion (which, she says, runs deep in her native Shandong) and ambition, on the look-out for a cause.

 

A newspaper article by Deng Pufang (the disabled son of Deng Xiaoping, and founder to the All China Disabled Persons' Federation) captured her imagination. Here, it seemed, was a way for her to make her mark; but, 'as I started this work I began to think more deeply about people's lives.'

 

Why did she not simply work with the Disabled Person's Federation? She seems to consider the question naive. 'A government organisation wouldn't accept people like me to do the job!'

 

In 1985, aged 31, without funds or experience, she set out to create a special school for mentally handicapped children. All she had was a list, given her by a local paediatrician, of 500 Guangzhou families with special needs children. She managed, through a friend in the Youth League, to attend a joint conference with the Hong Social Workers Association. This led to contacts with Caritas Hong Kong, which decided to back the scheme. But this was no one-way relationship. 'I chose Caritas,' Ms. Meng recalls, 'Because when we talked to them they seemed to have a solid background, and they told us they weren't focussed on the religious aspect.' (Twelve years later, however, Ms. Meng became a Catholic.)

 

In the summer of 1985, Caritas organised a two month training course in Guangzhou for twenty prospective staff who had responded to a newspaper advertisement. Some had a health sector background, but none had any experience of working with mentally handicapped children.

 

Zhiling school opened that autumn, in a rented school building. Against the advice of Caritas, which had recommended a maximum first intake of 50 children, the school opened with 96 students, aged 4-16, because 'it was too hard to turn applicants away.'

 

Caritas appointed a full time adviser to work with the school during its first year, and follow-up training courses were held during summer vacations. Teaching staff from the University of Hong Kong also provided training and professional materials and, from 1987, began to place postgraduate interns in the school.

 

Nevertheless, it was a chaotic start, with most skills learnt on the job. There were also administrative challenges. The 1980s, Meng Weina reminds us, were less flexible times than the present. Food, for example, could not be bought without ration coupons, so parents helped by sending along food parcels. Renting property was also difficult, and the first premises were not particularly suitable, although in the second year they were able to move into a better, kindergarten building.

 

Ms. Meng tried at the time to register the school with the local government but 'this was the first time they had encountered anything like this, and they didn't know what to do, or what kind of approval to give. I think some officials were annoyed because I had raised a difficult question that they didn't know how to answer.' Prevarication was the result, so the school went ahead and opened anyway. Despite considerable publicity surrounding the event, it initially ignored by government; but the school did eventually manage to obtain legal recognition from a district level education authority.

 

By 1989, some of Zhiling's first intake had become young adults, aged up to 20, and Caritas argued that they should graduate. Meng Weina, however, (backed she says, by the parents) felt that they still needed a supportive environment in which they could perhaps learn some basic vocational skills. She therefore set about establishing a second facility, Guangzhou Huiling. Caritas was not prepared to support this new venture, which was initially funded almost entirely from parental contributions. Huiling was established in 1990, and for a short while Ms Meng oversaw both institutions. In 1992, she resigned from Zhiling, but continued to serve on the board until 1996.

 

Huiling began with just 20 Zhiling graduates, now has around 180 young people. At first it was envisaged as a day care and training centre but, under parental pressure, agreed to offer residential care.

 

'After the experience of having their children in Zhiling,' Ms. Meng explains, 'Many parents asked us if we would agree to continue to care for their children indefinitely . . . As there was no one else is society offering this kind of social welfare I felt I could not refuse.' Indeed, Huiling drew up agreements with about 100 families, who paid an endowment fee of CNY 10-20,000 per child. This money was used to build a permanent site that 'gives us some long term security while also reassuring parents that their children have a lasting home.' Parents continue to pay monthly maintenance allowances for their children, and the centre has also received some external funding support, mainly from an Italian church organisation and from a private, Chinese donor.

 

Meng Weina is aware that by Western standards this is a rather controversial, approach to meeting the needs of mentally handicapped people, but she defends it vigorously. 'Many people might consider that my service is not a professional one, but I think what I have done fits with the reality of society in China,' she says. Private service providers in Guangzhou and elsewhere have since begun to offer similar arrangements, generally with much higher fee structures.

 

In 1999, Meng Weina felt it was time to set up an operation in the capital city. Increasingly, she says, she is 'not only focusing on individual people, but thinking how to change the whole system.' She felt that a presence in Beijing would be a vital step towards this broader mission.

 

Beijing Huiling has a more distinctively community based approach than Ms. Meng's previous ventures. Does this represent an evolution in her thinking? Not really, she says. The dispersed, small group homes, and concerted efforts to make use of existing community facilities (such as a local library, where Huiling has established a training and activity centre) owe more to her partnership with a Hong Kong registered social worker, Jane Pierini. She first went on to Guangzhou Huiling on a placement from Hong Kong University and collaborated in setting up the Beijing operation: 'Jane insisted that we do it this way.'

 

Whether or not the model she is hoping to develop is appropriate and sustainable for China, Meng Weina's energy and determination are unquestionable. She has highlighted an area where there is huge demand for family support mechanisms of some kind, and where the state has negligible services to offer. Her approach resolutely affirms the value and potential of children and young people who are among the least regarded in society. She has assembled a dedicated staff team that is breaking new ground in China in terms of therapeutic and training approaches for conditions that, once designated 'incurable,' were previously entirely neglected. And she has by no means run out of steam. On the contrary, she says, she is developing contacts with parents in other parts of China, encouraging them to develop new facilities, and offering advice and support. 'If their standards are good enough,' she says, 'We will invite them to use our name.'

 

Most simply, and perhaps most fundamentally, Meng Weina has shown that determined individuals in China can make changes. As such, she has proved an important advocate not just for mentally handicapped children but for China's civil society as a whole.