Lily Nie
Inductee Name
Lily Nie
Place of Birth
China
Date of Birth
1963
Year Inducted
2008
Category
Activism & Advocacy
Sponsor
Chinese Children Adoption International
Impact
International

In 1992, the law in China changed to allow foreigners to adopt Chinese children. This was the sign that Lily Nie needed to change the fate of China’s abandoned children, most of them girls. She and her husband founded Chinese Children Adoption International. In 1994, they rescued 20 babies from China’s grim orphanages and brought them into Colorado homes. That mission was so successful that in 1995 Nie made nine trips to China and saved 140 babies. To date, Chinese Children Adoption International, the largest China-only adoption agency in the world, has found American homes for more than 8,000 abandoned Chinese children, the vast majority of whom are girls.
Lily Nie created the Chinese Children Charity Fund to raise money to feed and care for the children in Chinese orphanages. The charity opened three model orphanages in China called Lily Orphan Care Centers and established a training program for orphanage care workers. When Chinese policy changed to make foster care possible, the charity pioneered a foster care program to train families and place hundreds of children out of orphanages and into loving foster homes in China.
In 1996, Nie opened the Joyous Chinese Cultural School in Littleton to teach adopted children their native language and culture. The school has become a national model for cultural education. She helped to create the Red Thread Counseling Center, the first in the U.S. to provide emotional support to adopted children and their families. Nie’s ChinaRoots program sponsors heritage tours to China for adoptive families and children. Lily Nie’s groundbreaking work in adoption in Colorado paved the way for a national movement that has brought more than 70,000 adopted Chinese children to new lives in the United States.