Do you know about Project Hope? It’s a social welfare program founded by the China Youth Development Foundation and the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China in October 1989. Its mission is to mobilize (动员) non-governmental financial resources inside and outside of China to provide and improve education in remote and not fully developed areas.
For the past few decades, Project Hope has raised funds to help countless poor children continue with their studies. It has also built thousands of Hope Elementary Schools and provided abundant equipment for their mini-libraries. Moreover, the program has provided funding for training village school teachers.
About 80 percent of Project Hope’s schools and kids are in China’s less-developed western and central regions. Out of every 100 rural elementary schools, about 7 are Hope Schools. Hope Internet Schools have also been built to provide distance education to rural teachers and students. What is more, a considerable number of college and middle school students have received Project Hope scholarships. Consequently, Project Hope has become one of the country’s best known and most successful social welfare programs.
Jinzhai Hope Elementary School in Anhui Province was the first to be established under Project Hope. In 1990, when it was still under construction, the school received its first donation – 0.4 yuan – from Chai Peiying, an elementary student living a few hundred miles away. Zhou Huosheng, a teacher in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province, sent his first donation in 1993 after reading about the school in the press. Since then, he has contributed 480,000 yuan, helping support more than 1,300 students.
As well as giving donations, people have also helped with teaching for the project. Sun Yongqi started to teach art there in 1991. “Back then, the school was not as well-equipped as it is today, but it already had the best facilities in the area,” he said. A two-story building with 27 classrooms housed 500 students, mainly from the neighborhood, along with 30 teachers. Today, the school has become larger. Classrooms feature high-tech multimedia equipment, and the number of teachers and students is steadily increasing.
Yu Gan, a teacher at the school for about 40 years, recalled, “When the new school was ready, the students rushed into the classrooms with roars of laughter, and they were excited to find that it had access to electricity. Some of them wouldn’t get up from the new chairs and desks. I wrote a lot on the new blackboard that day, much more than usual.”
With the rapid development of China’s economy, the central government has increased investment in elementary education to ensure that compulsory education (义务教育) is free to all. Thanks to the investment and the donations from millions of people at home and abroad, more and more children are now receiving formal education at school.