Education China Project #14815

Improve Educational Equity in Rural China

by Overseas China Education Foundation

Improve Educational Equity in Rural China

Project Report | Dec 30, 2015
Winter Wear for Children

By OCEF | Project Leader

Students of Nancun Elementary School with New Wear

Dear GlobalGiving Donors,

Time flys, and we are already at the end of 2015. In this cold winter, we wish everybody could stay warm.

Guangling is a small and underpriviledged county of Datong, Shanxi Province. It has lots of mountains, and during the winter, the tempreature could be below -10 °F. Because of the shortage of heat budget, even the classroom is so chilly that many students got frostbites on their hands and feet. It's really difficult for the kids to always focus on studying, without concerning too much about the chill.

This november, using the funds raised from you and GlobalGIving, OCEF bought new winter wear for 489 students and 62 teachers in Nancun Elementary School and Xishimen Elementary School, in Guangling. The price is about $13.5 for student's wear, and $20.6 for teacher's wear. The total expense is ¥49,625 (i.e., about $7,900). On these beautiful red suits, our green logo looks fantastic. Red means warm, and green means hope. We wish these kids and teachers could have a warm and bright winter, and make better progress in the new year.

Thank you, our GlobalGiving donors. You not only warmed those kids, but also warmed us.

Wish you a very Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

Students of Nancun Elementary School

Students of Xishimen Elementary School

Links:

OCEF facebook page

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Aug 25, 2015
A Trip to Guangling

By OCEF | Project Leader

Desks using GlobalGiving fund

Dear Donors,

Hope you are having a wonderful summer!

At the end of June, our staff traveled to Guangling, Shanxi with two GlobalGiving staff members. A lot of students who have been receiving our financial aid live in Guangling and we were really happy to visit some of them on this trip.

One of OCEF’s aid recipients in Guangling is in his final year of high school. His grandparents are ill and father disabled. His mother is slightly healthier and has diabetes. Together the school’s tuition and the medical expenses far exceed what the family can afford, as the annual household income is only $1350.

Another student attending the same high school has a similar struggle. This student lives with his parents and sister. His sister has congenital heart disease and paying for her operations had left the family in huge debt. Even worse, his father is disabled by a car accident, which leaves his mother as the only person in the family able to work, generating only little more than $800 income per year.

These two students with financial difficulty both received $350 from OCEF last year, like many other high school students in the Financial Aid Program. To apply for OCEF’s financial aid, a student must prove that his family annual income per capita is below 2300 yuan (~$380). Every year, we visit and evaluate new applicants as well as re-visit and re-evaluate existing students to make sure that our help goes to where it is needed the most.

The recent trip to Guangling, like our many other trips, showed us the strong will of aid recipients to stay in school and the progress they have made after months of dedicated studying. What we see greatly encourages us to continue our work. Since 1992, OCEF has distributed over 14,000 financial aid packages. We have changed the specific amounts of these packages a few times over the years according to the cost of living in China. At present, we offer yearly, need-based financial aid of $100, $150, and $350 to elementary, middle, and high school students, respectively.

As always, we truly appreciate your kindness and help. Thank you for making our work possible. Please keep supporting our students as you always do.

Sincerely,

OCEF

a student's home

another student's home

students in class

GlobalGiving staff in class with students

Links:

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May 22, 2015
Baiye Elementary School Report

By OCEF | Project Leader

Dear Donors,

This time we would like to share with you the story of the children at Baiye Elementary School. Baiye is located in Zhaoan County, Fujian Province. In 1997, a company from Xiamen donated an academic building to the school, giving it a total floor area of 1200 square meters. However, because of of its isolated location and various other reasons, at present the school only has five classes, three pre-school with 62 students, one first-grade and one second-grade with 40 students in total. Only five teachers are available to these children, and they have only broken blackboards and chalks as tools for teaching, for that no additional funding has been available for maintenance or new classroom equipment since the school building was put to use.

At the end of last year, our volunteers visited Baiye and decided to provide the children with more learning resources. This March, the first batch of books arrived at Baiye. The children are very young (under ~7) but well-mannered. They listened quietly while the volunteers introduced the books to them, waited patiently for the books to be distributed into their hands, and became immersed in the books immediately. The picture books were their favorites right now because they have not yet learned how to read most of the words, but their faces revealed great curiosity toward the contents that they could not understand. This is a hopeful start for the children and us.

According to one of the senior teachers at Baiye, there are as many as 1600 school-age children around the area and the school has quite a potential to grow. We truly look forward to cooperating with Baiye in the future. As always, thank you for all your help and kindness for making our project possible.

Sincerely,

Overseas China Education Foundation

Links:

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