Bring Me Sunshine's mission is to bring hope, education, and happiness to orphans in China through volunteer students who invest their gifts, talents, energy, and heart in a summer camp environment. Our mission is to also encourage students to become world leaders with hearts of compassion and awareness of those who are disadvantaged or oppressed.
Katrina Yang Bauer
CO-FOUNDER, CURRICULUM DESIGN
Katrina was born in Hong Kong, and spent her formative years in Shenzhen, China where she regularly volunteered in charity work. She developed an early awareness of how the large majority of orphans in the Chinese social Welfare system have special needs, and how these special needs inhibit them from becoming fully educated as well as living a fully, functional life. She loves to share her passion for cooking with the orphans at every Bring Me Sunshine summer camp. She is an all-around athlete who plays track along with tennis for Stevenson High School in California where she now lives.
Lance Yang Bauer
CO-FOUNDER, RECRUITING
The winter of 2002, Lance Yang Bauer was abandoned in a Shanghai apartment complex stairway at about three months old.
He was adopted by his American-Chinese parents at age one. Today, he is a happy senior at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
Lance focuses on playing his violin, and enjoys international travel, and history—especially ancient civilizations.
Helen Yang Bauer
CO-FOUNDER, TRAINING
The day of her birth, Helen Yang was left on the sidewalk in front of the Bao’an People’s Hospital (Shenzhen, Guangdong, China), where she was discovered and consequently taken to the Shenzhen Social Welfare Center.
Just weeks later, Helen’s smile made a big impression on a volunteer who facilitated a trip to the hospital for Helen to have treatment of an infection in her lungs and liver. Afterwards, she went home with the volunteer, who became her new adoptive mother.
Later on, her adoptive parents started the first charity school, “Sunshine Academy,” in Helen’s orphanage. Helen today is a senior at Wellesley College near Boston, Massachusetts, and a passionate soccer player.