Education China Project #20377

Keep poor kids educated in school in China

by Hometown Education Foundation Inc.

Keep poor kids educated in school in China

Project Report | Jul 11, 2016
What a difference we have made?!

By Tonghai Yang | Director of the charity and Professor of UW-Madiso

A poor student with positive attitude

During 2015-16, we have supported 1025 poor students, including 101 college students with a little over 900K Yuan RMB ($100K from Hometown Education Foundation and the rest from our partner Ningguo City Zhong Mei Ai Xin).

I recently went back to Ningguo city/county and visited some poor students at their homes and met with more than 40 high school students at a meeting where we invited a few college students and college graduates to share their college experience and give their advice on how to avoid stupid mistakes in college. Instead of numbers, let me mention a couple of stories to illustrate what a difference and inspiration our little support have made to the poor students.

1. Yinhao was supported by us since elementary school as his mother died of cancer with abotu $2500 debt. I met him at his school in 2008 and visited his home in summer 2009---he lived with his father and his father of 80+. see

http://www.hometowneducation.org/photos09.html

for my visit/interview then. He went to the local vocational high school (due to low test scores) and then got into a 3 year college in 2012. When other high school students had tutors help them improve academics, he was doing summer jobs to help his family. He did the same in college while working very hard on computer tech (his major). He was able to support himself in his 3rd year in college that he gave up our support. He got a good job at a private company immediately after graduation in 2015 thanks to his hard working ethics and experience and got promoted to a manager 3 months later---amazing. Last April, with all his saving from his work, he and two other friends went to Hang Zhou to start a new internet company with 200K Yuan RMB (he contributed less than 1/3). I had a very pleasant talk on July 4th (he is well grounded and well aware of the difficulty in starting and running a business). He appreciated very much our support and our encouragement during his very difficulty time. He told the high school graduates that the only difficulty you can overcome is death. He also told them to smile at everyone and you will get good results.

From a poor student to partial owner of a start-up company

2. Hui lost her father to a car accident while still a baby. Her mom left and remarried. She lives with grandma on mother's side sometime and grandparents' on father's side sometimes. His grandpather died a few years later, and his grandma on mom's side has also need to take care of her own adult son with some mental retardness due to some early child disease. Without our support, she might not have chance to go to high school, his grandma at father's side told me. She will go to a 3 year college this Fall. I happened to visit her family twice, onnce a couple of days ago and once 10 years ago. Interestingly, her grandma (father's side) and I recognized each other immediately. Her grandma can not help crying when describing how her son and husband died. brought tears to me and other volunteers.(2nd photo in the following links)

Meeting a girl without father

More stories are in the webpages and links there.

We will expand our program to Hui Ning County in Gan Su Province with help of a trusted volunteer Ma San whom wee have known since his college days with generous support of kind people like you. The Hometown Education Foundation will provide $145500 financial support to the poor kids in 2016-17 while our partner will have over 500K Yuan RMB donation in China to support poor kids during 2016-17. Please be asssured again that all your donation goes to the needy students 100 percent!!!

over 40 high school students getting together

A poor 5th grader with injured dad and old gradma

An amazing girl despite all financial difficulty.

Links:

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Apr 7, 2016
Keep poor kids in school for their basic education

By Tonghai Yang | Director

Jan 11, 2016
2015 Hometown Education Foundation Summary

By Tonghai Yang | Director of HEF (volunteer) and Professor of Math.

Menglan's application file

Since this is the end of 2015 and beginning of 2016,I think it is proper to give a brief summary of the Hometown Education Foundation has done during 2015, see the attahed file or our webite for detail

http://hometowneducation.org

Here is one student we added recently (one of 1026 students we support during 2015-16). Menglan is a 8th grade girl born 2002. She used to have a happy and financially secrure family with her parents, her younger sister, and her grandparents (on her mother side). Unfortunately, her father died suddently and her mother could not accept the fact and became mentally ill. To make it worse, her grandpa was fired by his company due to old age. Now only her grandma works as a street cleaner to support the family of 5. Our little supportof 1000 Yuan RMB (a little more than our usual 800 Yuan RMB a year) is essential to keep her in school to continue her very basic middle school education.

Here is another student Baofeng whom we have supported since our start at 2004. Her mother was handicapped and her father was often sick with stomach pain and was found to have stomach cancer. During the summer of her elementary school graduation (6th grader), her father fainted while working with her at field. She had to carry her father to a local hospital (extremely hard, see the attached photo when she was between 4th and 5th grade---summer of 2009). It was immediately tranferred to the county/city hospital where he was found to have stomach cancer. She stayed at the hospital to take care of her father day and night for 17 days, while her disabled mother had to eat the same vegetable available for 17 days due to lack of money and other difficulty. Despite all the these difficulty and her poor academic background, she worked extremely hard with our support and was able to be accepted by a second level university last summer. It was really hard earned but she was considering not going to college. Instead she wanted to work to help her family (she started immediately to work after high school graduation). I was very happy to be able to convince her with another volunteer's help (also a poor student we supported but now coming back to support us with donation and volunteering), she decided to go to college to give herself a higher platform and better opportunity to support herself and her family four years later.

A little support makes big difference to the poor kids who have so little. It also inspires them to feel more confident, less isolated, to do better and work harder, and to become more caring themselves. Please check our webpage

http://hometowneducation.org/letters.html

for their letters, and

http://hometowneducation.org/photos15-1.html

and links there for Professor Tonghai Yang's annual visit to some of the students. Please be assured that 100 percent of your donation (except the extra fee GlobalGiving charges you) goes to the needy students.

Baofeng's family with Prof. Yang in summar 2009.

Baofeng's high school essay award

Links:

Google search Hometown Education Foundation

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