English

About charity event

In the western part of China (or could be anywhere), many children have to quit school and lose their chances of being educated.
As you might know, there are many NGOs (none government organization) all over the world. Some has started their charity events in many ways.
We focus on helping out one specific area. It is called ChengDuo County (青海省称多县) in QingHai Province.
I went to visit the county during December 2005 as a volunteer photographer. Things looked pretty tough there. I came back to Shanghai and brought a lot of pictures. To be honest, those pictures can not be defined as art or whatsoever. Every time I look at the pictures, I can see those children’s face and I can feel their chilling form the cold wind.

The following are FAQs:
Q: Where and what is Qinghai Province and how is this place that we are going to help out?
Tony: Qinghai Province is located in the northeastern part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. I took a train from Shanghai to XiNing, which takes 32 hours. XiNing is the capital of QingHai province. Then every other day there is a bus going straight to ChengDuo County (青海省称多县), which takes 18 hours if the road condition is good. If not, 20 hours could be possible, or more.
ChengDuo County (青海省称多县) is in the southern part of QingHai province and it is one of the poorest area in China. The average sea level is around 4,500 meters high. Weather is cold and windy. Snow lands everywhere even in summer. There is no steady electricity power supply in the whole county. Among 40,000 people living in the county, 90% are Tibetans and close to 20,000 people have an annual income of nothing. Basic food there are local rice and cattles. Also, the medical care is helpless.
The population there is a mixture of minorities, including the Kazakhs, Mongols and Hui (Chinese Muslims). Tibetans are found throughout the province and the Han settlers are concentrated the area of XiNing province.
When I was doing my photo job there, normal temperature is –15 degrees centigrade. By night time it dropped down to –25 degrees. The main fuel is manure.

Q: What happens there?
Tony: Heavy snow storm raids the county often and causes huge damage to the local nomads. As far as children are concerned, most of them have to drop school because all the village school are short of fuel and food supply and warm clothes.
Q: Whom are we helping?
Tony: We focus on helping the children in the school.The local normads also understand that as long as they put their children in the school, the children can get help from us with clothes and stationary. The primary school children hardly understand any Mandarin.
Q: What have we done and what else can we do?
Tony：We have been collecting second-handed clothes and some schoolbags and lots of stationary. We have collected over 8000 kg in 2007 and we need more help. Do not use fast delivery because there is no such service there.

The whole charity event is a long term project. If you have clothes which you want to throw away, please bring it to us, and we will pack and mail them.
Contact Tony for details if you are in shanghai
.msn:tiantianzhuxue@hotmail.com
tel: 13003212283