Going to School: Helping Children

The first 50 students helped receive pencils and book bags, Dong Wang School, September 1996In most countries around the world, the ability for a child to go to school is assumed. Going to school, the meaning of the two characters on the picture to the right, is not a given for the children in poor Luodian County in Guizhou Province.

There peasant farmers find themselves without enough money each year to buy seed or fertilizer, let alone pay for the supplies or the clothing that their children need in school. The families also often need their children to help at home: collecting grasses to feed farm animals, tending the fields, cooking, or caring for younger children.

It is a simple but powerful fact: going to school can change the course of a child's life. This is the fundamental mission of the Fund: to give children a chance to change the course of their lives, a chance that would otherwise not be within their reach.

The Fund contracts with the Luodian County Education Bureau to provide support to the neediest children. We establish criteria for the selection of students—extreme financial difficulty, no other financial aid sources, and special talent or needs. Preference is given to girls, who are still dreadfully disadvantaged in rural China. In the 2010/2011 school year, the Fund will help 127 students in 15 different schools, ranging from primary through college education.

* The Grameen Bank was founded by Muhammad Yunus in 1983 to provide people in Bangladesh with "micro" loans to help them release themselves out of the trap of poverty. This sparked a revolution called micro-lending, now practiced around the world. See Banker to the Poor (New York: PublicAffairs, 1999).

Creating Self-Sufficiency: Helping Women

Women are positive role models for the young children who accompany them to literacy classes, November 2004In China, the term for becoming literate is "eliminating blindness," the two characters on this picture of women in a literacy class.

From 2003 to 2010, the Fund supported a women's literacy program. The goals were simple: to help peasant women with little or no education to read and write the most commonly used Chinese characters, do addition and subtraction, recognize the names of common crops and pesticides, and write simple letters.

Research has shown that when a woman gets an education that they value it for themselves, and will value it even more for their children.

The Fund's program of literacy classes for peasant women was directed by the Beijing Cultural Development Center for Rural Women. The Center helped local school officials and community leaders organize and conduct the classes supported by the Fund.

The Fund's long-term goal had always been to have the women's literacy program directed by local resources, rather than those in Beijing 1,000 miles away. Local control is essential for the long-term viability of any program in China. At the same time, with local control, critical new capabilities are honed so that local staff and officials can undertake other work to improve the lives of citizens.

With guidance from the Fund's Advisory Board, Give2Asia's Beijing-based staff made several attempts from 2007-2010 to find a suitable local partner, but none of these efforts was successful. "It is with great reluctance that we decided to conclude the women's literacy program," Gwen Moore commented. "Yet, by any measure you choose, the program was a tremendous success. In total, nearly 1,500 women participated and improved their life situation," Moore said.

The Fund will continue to seek a local partner to assume responsibility for the women's literacy program. When one is found, the Fund will again support this very important program.