Founded in 1996 and registered in 2000 as a Hong Kong non-profit charity, the purpose of China Star Light Charity Fund Association is poverty alleviation and educational support in "old revolutionary base areas, minority inhabited areas, frontier areas and poverty stricken areas". The Association aims to help poverty-stricken areas develop economic self-sufficiency. This includes investing in local infrastructure projects, agriculture and livestock development projects, building hospitals and nursing homes, and improving other welfare facilities.

The Association's programs can generally be split into education, health and cultural areas.

In the educational sector, the Association builds schools in more than 20 provinces, cities and autonomous regions, and has teamed up with a university in Guangzhou to help students who otherwise would not be able to afford tuition to attend university. In 2008, the Association cooperated again with a university in Guangzhou to create the "Compassion Ambassador" （爱心大使）program, which organized students to travel to ethnic minority areas for volunteer teaching. Since then, the Association has organized other programs for students from Hong Kong to volunteer teach in the Mainland. In 2009, the Association began to provide support to ethnic minorities orphans in Yunnan Province.

In the health sector, the Association launched the "Star Light Hu Xin Xing" (星火护心行） program in 2008, which collected money to provide surgeries to children with congenital heart disorders. 134 children had surgeres thanks to the program. In 2000, the Association helped to build a health center in Hebei Province, in 2007 it used donations to provide a hospital in Yan'an with an ambulance and other medical equipment, in 2006 it donated an ambulance to a hospital in Guangdong, and in 2008 it donated the funds to build the hospital a new building. The Association has also teamed up with the China Old Liberated Area Construction Association to organize a medical team to provide support to disaster and poverty-stricken areas in Hebei, Anhui, and Sichuan.

In the cultural sector, the Association founded the Chinese Cultural Study Center (中华文化学习中心), to promote national confidence and pride.