Charity's results are truly heart-warming

Stepping into Australian Christine Cullen's spacious French Concession home in Shanghai is more like entering a storage room full of brand new children's toys, clothes, books and blankets.

The items piled up all over her shiny, wooden floors are not her own children's, however. They are set aside for poor rural kids on the outskirts of Shanghai, who suffer from congenital heart disease (CHD). The parents of these children cannot afford the expensive heart surgery they desperately need, let alone toys and clothes.

Wearing a warm smile, Cullen, who followed her husband to Shanghai in 1996, describes her early visits to weekly play sessions at the Shanghai Thoracic Hospital.