Each year, Akzo Nobel's Community Program has an election for the Program of the Year. For 2007, the award was given to the Little Sunshine House. Please also see our listing of other prize winners.
Every two weeks 2 employees of Polymer Chemicals Shanghai visit young kidney patients from poor families in the Little Sunshine House, part of a children’s hospital affiliated to the Fu Dan University of Shanghai.
In total 9 employees have volunteered for a whole year in a rotating schedule to bring normal life to these children who are seriously ill of kidney disease and often have to wait a long time to receive a donor kidney or receive post-surgeon medical treatment.
The Little Sunshine House is a room specially created for these patients. Apart from financial support they also need love and care from the outside world, recovering from their disease, physically as well as psychologically in order to be able to go back to school as soon as possible. Visiting and helping the children in the House is the major responsibility for the Akzo Nobel team members.
The regular tasks over the year are divided among 4 of them, namely: the team leader, the visit scheduler and reminder, the stuff purchaser (books, stationery, toys and/or special required food, etc.) and the expense claimer.
During the visits the Akzo Nobel employees help the children with their homework or study, play games, tell stories, draw pictures, help make handicraft and whatever is needed to help the children ease their pain and feel happy and beloved.
At special occasions like Christmas or Children s Day or a child s birthday and the time before the 1st of September (the new official opening of a new semester in China) the children receive special gifts.
Apart from the expenses for the regular visits, the necessary medical follow-up treatment after surgery, of those children whose parents cannot afford it, is financed with the support of the Community Program.
Based on the experiences of the employees who already regularly pay the visits to the Little Sunshine House it is expected that more volunteers will join the team. They will then also be able to see the happy faces of the little patients when outside normal life is brought to them in hospital.