As the world’s third largest country, China has large areas of mountainous land. Although the scenery in the mountain regions is stunning, most of the people living in such areas are deeply poor due to weak infrastructure and insufficient education resources. Xingwen County is just such a poor place. For people there, making a living is already very difficult, not to mention having a dream of a bright future. To support their families, young people there have to leave their hometown and head to cities to work, leaving the elders and the children behind.   

To help the children in Xingwen County receive education and gain the ability to get rid of poverty in the future, the Capital Intellectual Property Services Association has been providing study and living funds to school-aged children there for several years. We, AFD China, also would like to make joint efforts with the Association to help children there gain the opportunity to change their fate. Since 2018, AFD China has been actively participating in the “Light up Wisdom” project launched by the Association and funding the study and living expenses of over 10 children each year. In 2021, the Association planned to provide financial aids to 77 children in total, and we continued to subsidize the study and living expenses of 8 children who we have helped for two years.

“The choices you make today determine your tomorrow”. It is fortunate for a person to have the chance to make choices among different possibilities. To make a choice, however, first you need to have the ability to find that there is more than one option, and you also need to have the courage and confidence to withstand bad results. Such ability and confidence come from knowledge. For those who are completely illiterate, they do not know the power of knowledge and have no interest in reading or writing, and perhaps the land under their feet and the sky above their heads are their only concern because their life depends on the crop yield of the land while the crop yield depends on the weather. For them, the needs of society, the dilemma between dreams about the future and the worries in real life, etc., which often “torture” urban people, are just unnecessary troubles created by the people themselves. With joint efforts with the Association, we hope that those children can have the ability and courage to make "choices", instead of being trapped in one place with a limited outlook.

We will continue paying attention to children in need and hope that they will be given the opportunity and the right to make “choices". We hope that more and more people will join such charity activities and work together with us to try to make a difference in the lives of those children.

Philanthropists are not saviors, and doing charity is not for a good reputation. We just hope that kindness and goodwill can be passed on from people to people, and that those who need help can feel the warmth of the society and understand that distance cannot separate the hearts that really care, so that others’ care and love can grow in the hearts of those in need and burst into the most beautiful blossom.