Around 40 delegates from colleges and high schools nationwide gathered at Harvard this weekend to discuss playgroup activities for children, overseas adoption, and issues of cultural sensitivity at the first annual China Care Conference.

The Harvard China Care club co-hosted the event with the China Care Foundation, a national group founded by Matthew A. Dalio ’06 dedicated to improving the plight of Chinese orphans.

The conference aimed to mobilize interested students in the ongoing effort to help Chinese orphans as well as start new China Care clubs in their hometowns.

“The mission of the conference was to empower youth,” Dalio said. “I see China Care as a vehicle to pass the ability to touch so many lives on to other places.”

The three-day event combined informational panels taught by leading pediatric specialists with instructional workshops and social forums planned by members of the Harvard organization.

Harvard Medical School Assistant Professor in Psychiatry Joshua Sparrow opened discussions on Saturday along with Jane Aronson, a New York-based pediatrician who specializes in treating adopted children. They addressed China’s policy limiting families to one child and the abandonment of children.

Former club President Gary M. Cooney ’05 also spoke of his personal experience working at a Chinese orphanage and his joy when one child from that orphanage found a foster family in Atlanta.

“The conference gave [delegates] not only the tools, but the drive and reason to create new clubs,” Conference Coordinator Alex J. Lee ’06 said.

Student-led workshops on Sunday gave delegates pointers on coordinating their clubs, fundraising, and launching different mentoring programs.

China Care clubs have already been started based on the Harvard model at Yale and Brown. Harvard China Care Co-President Aidan S. Madigan-Curtis ’06 said she was hoping to reach more schools through the conference.

“If we can do this in one school, imagine what we can do if we branch out,” she said. “We’re going to touch 50 times more lives now.”

Elizabeth Lautner, program director of the national China Care Foundation, called the event “an absolute success.”

“By the time [delegates] left, they had not only made friends from the groups, but were really excited about going back and doing the same thing that Harvard does,” she said.

Harvard’s chapter of China Care received a large influx of applications from outside schools to attend this weekend’s conference after Dalio’s December appearance on ABC and in People magazine, according to Cooney.

Though many applications were turned down, Cooney said Harvard’s club will assemble informational packages to distribute to interested students across the country.

“We never expected this degree of enthusiasm,” Dalio said. “It’s the first year of many years in spreading a whole new phase for China Care.”

—Staff writer Ying Wang can be reached at yingwang@fas.harvard.edu.