The most recent government statistics reported more than 3.5 million elementary school dropouts in China. The urban-rural education divide remains a serious social problem. To address this issue, OCEF has been spearheading for 29 years a social movement to bring tens of thousands of underprivileged school children back to the classroom, changing their lives.
1) School drop-out problem. Despite the economic growth, the latest government statistics shows still 3.5 million kids drop out of elementary school and 7.3 million students cannot afford secondary school. The problem is more pronounced in rural areas. 2) Poor reading environment. Many rural kids never read any extracurricular books or have any references books/dictionaries. 3) Quality of campus life. Run-down buildings are a reality rural students deal with on a daily basis.
Our project addresses this problem through four programs: 1) a financial aid program to help kids in elementary and secondary schools, 2) a scholarship program to support high school students and college freshmen, 3) a library program to ensure rural kids have books to read, and 4) a special quality-of-life enhancement program.
The donations raised from this project will keep thousands more rural students in classrooms. They will have more books to read and a better educational experience. All of these changes combine to minimize the urban-rural educational divide in China and eventually the urban-rural economic divide. The sponsored students will be empowered to become better future leaders as well.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
