Founding legacy
Honoring the vision that started it all.
Endeavor Children's Services was founded in 2011 by Janice Secord Neilson on the belief that every child is born with the right to be loved, wanted, and nurtured.
Founding Executive Director — Janice Neilson
The founding executive director of Endeavor Children's Services, Janice Secord Neilson, draws upon decades of experience in international child welfare services. As creator and executive director of a program in China sponsored by the Association François-Xavier Bagnoud in partnership with UNICEF and the Chinese Women's Federation, Janice introduced a unique pilot project to demonstrate that strategic community-based intervention can profoundly improve the lives of orphans and vulnerable children and the families who care for them. The four-year FXB China project's outcomes are commended in the UNICEF Best Practices publication “Responding to Children, Young People and AIDS”. During this project, Janice wrote and published I Am Who?, a book of expressive therapies that has been shown to significantly improve the psycho-social well-being of children who have experienced trauma.
Prior to undertaking the FXB China project, Janice was the executive director and president of the World Association for Children and Parents, one of the largest adoption and child assistance agencies in the United States. Under Janice's leadership, WACAP provided health care, education and nutrition to more than 200,000 children and placed nearly 10,000 children in adoptive families. Janice created programs in the US, China, Russia, Romania, India, Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Colombia and Ecuador, including the Peony Project in Henan, China, which serves children with disabilities. As Bill Gates, Sr., told the media, “WACAP has been a shining light in the lives of thousands of children with special needs.”
Janice has served on the board of the Joint Council of International Children's Services in Washington, DC, and on the Washington State Governor's task force on children's issues; advised the US Congressional Coalition on Adoption and the Evan B. Donaldson Institute in New York; been named an “Angel in Adoption” by the U.S. Congress and nominated for the “World Citizen Award” of the World Affairs Council. She has received awards honoring her work from the Bureau of Civil Affairs (People's Republic of China), the Department of Public Welfare (Thailand), the Child Welfare League of the Philippines and Holt Children's Services (Korea).
Where it began
The years in China
Before Endeavor Children's Services existed, the work was already underway. Janice wrote and published I Am Who? during the four-year FXB China project, for children who already had help with their material needs but no way to work through what had happened to them. More than 400 of them worked through the book between 2007 and 2009, UNICEF cited it as a Best Practice therapeutic tool, and ECS was founded in 2011 to carry that work forward.
Her memoir
What Is My Tomorrow?
Hope and Healing for the World's Children
Janice Secord Neilson
In her memoir, Janice writes about confronting seemingly impossible situations around the world — sustaining herself, and instilling hope and resilience in others, by the most ethical means she could imagine.
ISBN 979-8-9926316-1-6