>>By Graeme Smith<<
In June 2005, I was lucky enough to round up some of my closest friends and relos for a round of bowls at the Clovelly Bowling Club. Instead of giving presents to commemorate my rush towards 40, many lovely folks gave donations towards needy schools in Huoshan County. In all, 11000 yuan (just under $2000) was raised.
The three schools were chosen on the basis of need. Yangsan village is located in the remote northern corner of Dongxi Xi Township, the poorest township in Huoshan County, which is an ‘officially poor’ county in the west of Anhui Province. The area is connected by single-track dirt road, a 20 km drive from the township seat. Because of the mountainous land, farming isn’t enough to provide for families, so usually one or both parents will be working in a distant urban centre, leaving the grandparents to look after the children. For some reason, nearly all of the able bodied people in this area go to work in Hangzhou (there’s even a daily bus service).
The road home from Yangsan Primary School
While the area is beautiful, it isn’t sufficiently stunning to attract tourists. Because of the remoteness of the schools (it’s a six kilometre walk for some kids), many children eat lunch at school, and some have to live away from home for the whole week. For the other kids, it’s a long walk home.
Lunchtime walk from Dishuiyan Primary School
The view from Dishuiyan Primary School
Before this support reached the school, all of them lacked even the most basic sporting or music equipment, and lacked even a handful of library books.
School equipment, Dishuiyan Primary School, 2004
The main school at Dishuiyan now has an impressive library, and the kids are already making good use of the sporting equipment.
… but they can stand on their head
And for those of you who love a spreadsheet (you know who you are, Mark), here’s where your money went:
>>by Lucy Montgomery<<
In 2004 and 2005 I also had a great time thinking about ways to improve things at Fanchong. I owe a big thankyou to my mum – Brenda Ford – for helping to get things started with an initial donation. Staff at QUT were also particularly supportive and we managed to raise about $500 for art supplies and equipment.
People also chipped in in other ways. John Hartley suggested that we contact Chris Sarra, principal of Cherbourg State School about our project. Cherbourg State School sent a fantastic package of sports equipment, photos, pens and rulers to Fanchong – much to the delight of Fanchong’s students. Marcus Foth helped us to build a ‘Fanchong Project’ website and Tanya Notley suggested that we could use digital stories made by kids at Cherbourg to help build a connection between the two schools. Wu Qiongli (Leila) helped us to dub the stories into Chinese and I was able to deliver the short films to Fanchong myself when I visited in June.
