A community based child-development program has been initiated in Yiliang county, Zhaotong prefecture-level city, Yunnan Province, by the Fujian Industrial Charitable Foundation in cooperation with Heart to Heart Community Care. The prefecture is considered to be one of the poorest in China, and it is almost entirely agricultural. Heart to Heart Community Care (HHCC) is a non-profit based in Kunming which provides services to migrant workers and their families.
According to HHCC, over 70% of children in Yiliang are left-behind, meaning that their parents live and work elsewhere and rarely get a chance to come home and look after them. Most of these children are looked after by their grandparents, who are normally busy with farm work and do not pay much attention to their study or growth.
In August, the program focused on the decoration of the first children’s activity center in Yiliang, which is designed to provide basic education and entertainment to local children. The center officially opened in mid-September, and it welcomes at least 20 children every day. It includes reading rooms, activity rooms and sports zones, which aim to cultivate children’s creativity and abilities. The program also plans to initiate a few themed activities later on to further promote the children’s motivation and allow them to find their own interests and potential.
In addition to the activity center, HHCC also uses local schools as a platform to help underprivileged children. In August they hired five long-term volunteer teachers, who helped to alleviate the serious shortage of faculty and allow the local teachers additional time to get to know the students who need more care and love. The organization’s social workers have spent a lot of effort visiting local families to assess children’s living and educational conditions and offer opportunities and help that can really meet their needs.
