Children with cleft lips and palates in China are often abandoned by their parents and have to grow up in orphanages. The one-child-policy contributes to the fact that many parents cannot imagine themselves raising a child with a deformity. The German Cleft Children’s Aid Society is now engaged in a small project for these helpless children since 2008. In the very poor province of Shanxi in China’s north we are able to organise surgery for the orphaned cleft children in individual cases.