China's Amity Foundation will celebrate its 20th Anniversary through "exposure tours" and hold an international consultation on social development in China on Nov. 1-9 that will show participants the works Amity has done in the country.
For the past twenty years, Amity has assisted China in medical sanitation, education, social welfare, and agricultural development. Through their contributions and the involvement of other countries, Christians have been given the opportunity to "meet the needs of the society," particularly with "the Chinese people," Amity said.
On Nov. 1-5, teams from all over the world will learn about Amity's work in the four provinces — Guizhou, Ningxia, Sichuan, and Yunnan.
For the past few years, Amity has been operating Church-run projects where the churches have built hospitals and clinics in order to provide medical services for rural residents, as well as welfare projects designed to charge less to help those who can't afford the costs.
Their most recent project was an HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness program that trained residents in Yunnan and Henan province, by educating church leaders and laity on how to approach the epidemic and those infected by the virus.
In Guizhou and Sichuan, participants will visit colleges and seminaries where they will observe the Teachers project and other educationally-related projects. The programs are designed to encourage the volunteers to "become bridges spanning the human distance between the people and churches of their home countries and the Chinese people," a statement made by Church World Service (CWS).
The latter part of the Anniversary involves an international consultation on social development, held on Nov. 6-9 at the Nanjing Mandarin Garden Hotel, that will open with a worship service in Nanjing, China.
The Amity Foundation is a voluntary organization that was established in April 1985 under the initiative of Chinese Christians who wanted to promote education, social services, health, and rural development from China's coastal provinces in the east to the minority provinces in the west.
It has since partnered up with many Christian organizations around the world. The most widely known relationship that Amity has is with the Worldwide Bible Society when they opened the only government-approved Christian literature printing company in China called the "Amity Printing Company Limited," which published over 4 million bibles each year.
