Yang Zeyun, a teacher in the Pozhao Village Primary School in
eastern
Shaanxi Province, played an organ while talking about how much
better conditions for learning there had become.
"My pupils used to sit in cold draughts for classes in the
winter because our classroom was in dangerous disrepair for years,"
Yang said. "Now we have not only good classrooms, but also advanced
facilities."
The school and its approximately 400 pupils are benefiting from
funding support from overseas.
In fact, Shaanxi, a northwestern province with a number of
poverty-stricken farmers, has implemented 15 projects with a total
fund of US$43 million to support local poor farmers with their
production, to improve rural medical service and health conditions,
to help protect rural women and children's interests and rights,
and to train laid-off workers, according to provincial commerce
department officials.
The funds used to benefit farmers' production and living were
from foreign governments and international organizations, said Li
Xuemei, director of the Shaanxi commerce department, which operates
the projects supported by the funds.
"Two projects supported with US$733,300 from the Australian
Government were completed in 2005, of which the Liulingou water
supply project, in a mountainous village in northern Shaanxi,
provides high quality and healthy water for 534 farmers to drink,
and the other project for a school in Pozhao Village in eastern
Shaanxi gives 400 pupils good education conditions," the director
said.
After a five-year effort supported with US$8 million from the
Belgian Government, the social and economic development projects
carried out in six poverty-stricken counties in the province helped
raise local farmers' incomes and adjust the structure of local
agricultural production, said Xu Donglin, an official with the
provincial agriculture department.
Wenzhigou Village, for instance, a mountainous village in
southern Shaanxi, received help from the projects through the
Belgian fund and enjoyed an average growth in annual income from
260 yuan (US$32) per person five years ago to 720 yuan (US$89) per
person last year by changing their production from grain to cash
crops, Xu said.
About 10,000 local farmers received agricultural technological
training, paid for with US$14 million from the Italian and German
governments, Li Xuemei said.
And a project to protect rural women from domestic violence and
ensure rural children's schooling, which has been carried out in
Shaanxi since 2001 with US$8.4 million from the United Nations
Children's Fund, has benefited about 10,000 rural women and more
than 5,000 rural children, Li said.
(China Daily April 6, 2006)