In 1997, Jenny Bowen and husband Richard Bowen adopted a child from a Chinese social welfare institution. The child suffered from the adverse effects common to institutionalized children. After a year of love and stimulation, she caught up and began to thrive. Bowen set up Half the Sky with the aim of offering the same care to children in China’s orphanages. In collaboration with early childhood educators and pediatricians, the organization trained employees in China’s orphanages to provide care and early education to infants and toddlers. In 2005, China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs held its first national conference on orphan care and Half the Sky was the only foreign organization invited to present. By 2007, OneSky's approach had become China’s national standard for care of orphaned children, including those in rural villages orphaned by AIDS. Half the Sky was invited to provide guidance for Hu Jintao’s “Blue Sky” Plan, a massive infrastructure investment in child welfare. In 2008, the organization was recognized for its contributions by official registration at a national level—one of only a small handful of foreign NGOs. In that same year Jenny Bowen won the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, presented by Jimmy Carter, in recognition of OneSky’s efforts to bring change to China’s child welfare system. In 2011, with OneSky programs operating in 56 state-run welfare institutions across China, OneSky entered into a groundbreaking public/NGO/private partnership celebrated at the Great Hall of the People to, together with government, train every child welfare worker in the nation. In 2014, Jenny Bowen's book, was published by HarperCollins. In 2015, Half the Sky began the process of bringing its programs and training to rural China to assist left-behind children. In 2016, to reflect its broadened mission, Half the Sky changed its name to OneSky for all children. In 2017 OneSky developed a demonstration early learning center in Da Nang, Vietnam specifically for the children of migrants who had moved to work in factories. These children would otherwise have had no safe, affordable care. In 2018 Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training invited OneSky to scale its training for early education practitioners and caregivers across 19 provinces. In Mongolia’s capital city of Ulaanbaatar, OneSky trained caregivers in a state-run nursery serving vulnerable toddlers. In 2020, OneSky opened the in Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong. The center is a training hub for early childhood care and education for childcare professionals and paraprofessionals locally and across Asia. It also provides community space for children up to the age of six and their caregivers.
