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May 2002
Dear Friends,
Light At The End of The Tunnel
As you are aware, here in Nanjing, China, we are working through
the Amity Foundation—a Chinese NGO—as English teachers.
It is Amity’s Education Division (ED) that coordinates with
foreign teachers like us to come work in China, and we want to
use this newsletter to tell you about a special ministry that
the Education Division is providing for primary school age children
in a county adjacent to Nanjing, here in Jiangsu Province, thanks
to gifts from Amity teacher alumni and others.
In the mid-1990s, several teachers gave a sum of money to the
Education Division, asking only that "something good"
be done with it. Then, in 1999, Nanjing’s municipal charity
association brought to Amity’s attention the plight of the
children of many poor families in Honglan zhen (Honglan village)
in Lishui County, which lies to the southeast of Nanjing. This
was the beginning of our "Back To School Project" involvement
in this eastern region of China. To clarify a bit, the Education
Division’s project in Honglan zhen is a separate entity from
the Back To School Projects initiated by Amity’s Rural Development
Division in many remote western regions of China.
Lagging behind in income, but not in tuition fees
Honglan zhen has a population of 50,000. There are 14 primary
schools enrolling 4,600 students. At present there are 87 children
in Honglan zhen whose families are poor enough to make them eligible
for charity assistance. What makes the situation for these poor
families so much harder is that they live in one of China’s
most developed provinces. Tuition fees here are twice as high
as in other provinces. With the Back To School Project fund, Amity
is currently assisting 25 poor children during the 2002 spring
term. Another 13
are sponsored by local companies or individuals, mostly Nanjing
residents. So, about a third of the children in need are currently
getting direct support from somewhere. That is not to say that
the remaining two-thirds are unschooled—primary education
in China is, after all, compulsory. But the financial burden of
these unsponsored children is falling upon the schools they attend,
and the schools themselves are also struggling. For example, desks
and chairs here have been donated by schools in Nanjing. Giving
financial assistance to the students, then, is easing the burden
on the school system.
An American teacher goes to see the children
In December, John had the opportunity to accompany two of the
Amity staff to go visit the community and meet some of the children,
which for him was a very moving experience. He learned some of
the stories about their families. There are quite a number of
children there being raised by single parents, because of the
death of their fathers. Many of Jiangsu’s rural residents
make their living through fishing, and traffic accident fatalities
often hit fishermen. As a result, a story John often heard began:
"My father was a fisherman; he died
in a traffic accident..."
A second phenomenon peculiar to the county of Lishui is that
many of the women in this community were actually purchased from
even poorer places like nearby Anhui Province. Some of these women
later run away, taking the child with them. Others, if they are
widowed or wish to remarry, leave the child behind with the father’s
parents.
Being there in Honglan zhen, meeting those kids and seeing the
enormous obstacles they face in their lives makes one wonder what
really can be done to help. You give a little money to help pay
school fees, but what about the rest of this child’s dark
world? The other side of this small coin, however, is that we
are giving them moral support of a very precious kind. We are
letting them know that there are people in other places who know
of them, who actually care, and who want to see them succeed and
prosper. Perhaps we’re giving a few of those kids the thread
of hope that they need to reach the end of a long dark tunnel.
Yours in Christ,
John and Kim Strong
The 2002 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 179
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