Madame Soong Ching Ling was the guiding heart of China and a leading woman of the world during much of the 20th century. She formulated policies that safeguarded women’s and children’s rights and committed herself to promoting world peace. To honour her leadership and many contributions, she was named Honorary Chairman of the People’s Republic of China. Madame Soong Ching Ling was a passionate, principled and courageous leader with a lifelong love of children and their education. In 1938 Soong Ching Ling established the China Welfare Institute (CWI) devoting her life to the expansion of high quality Early Childhood Education in China. She established a nursery for children and later a kindergarten, exploring new methods of preschool education. Following her death in 1981, the CWI set up another kindergarten in 1991; larger in scale, with the support of the Shanghai Municipal Government and named it after Soong Ching Ling as a living memorial to her. The name of the kindergarten was inscribed by the former Chairman of the People’s Republic of China: Mr. Jiang Ze Min. The Kindergarten has continued to flourish and has now expanded into two campuses; one in Hongqiao and the other in Zhao Xiang, which was opened in September 2005.
