Jenny Bowen

Biography

A former screenwriter and independent filmmaker, Jenny Bowen founded Half the Sky (now OneSky for all children) in 1998 in order to give something back to China, her adopted daughters’ home country, and to the many orphaned and abandoned children then languishing behind institutional walls. Under Ms. Bowen's leadership, OneSky has grown into a global NGO whose mission is to train communities and caregivers to provide nurturing responsive care and early education that unlocks the potential hidden in our world’s most vulnerable young children. OneSky now works in Mainland China, Vietnam, Mongolia, and Hong Kong.

In China, OneSky (now through its local implementing partner, Chunhui Children’s Foundation) has transformed the lives of many thousands of marginalized children and helped China re-imagine its entire child welfare system. In Vietnam, OneSky has tailored its approach to address the needs of 1.2 million children of factory workers, opened the Da Nang Early Learning Center, and, in partnership with government, is now scaling its training for home-based childcare providers throughout the country. In Hong Kong, in 2020, OneSky opened its regional training base—the P.C. Lee OneSky Global Centre for Early Childhood Development—in order to build a better future for the disadvantaged children of Hong Kong and the Asia Pacific region.

Among other awards, Ms. Bowen has been named named the American Chamber of Commerce's Women of Influence Non-Profit Leader of the Year, received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship and was chosen by popular vote to carry the Olympic Torch on Chinese soil. She serves on China’s National Committee for Orphans and Disabled Children and on the Expert Consultative Committee for Beijing Normal University’s Philanthropy Research Institute. She is the author of the memoir, Wish You Happy Forever: What China’s Orphans Taught Me About Moving Mountains, published by Harper Collins.