By the end of June 2002, over 200,000 urban young people with
college background have participated in the Youth Volunteer
Poverty-Relief Relay Project. Organizations of the Chinese
Communist Youth League at all levels have selected and sent 10,105
young people to 207 state-supported poor counties in 17 provinces,
autonomous regions and municipalities in middle and western regions
including
Xinjiang and
Qinhai.
Currently, 3,205 volunteers are working on the frontline of the
poverty-relief project.
The project was launched in 1996 as a trial issue and promoted
nationwide in 1998. It is jointly organized by the Central
Committee of the Communist Youth League of China, Ministry of
Education, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Science and Technology,
Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Personnel and the West
Development Office under the State Council. Young volunteers are
recruited from the public and they relay the process regularly to
keep the project going. In order to help tap human resources in the
middle and western regions, volunteers of each group go to poor
areas to work for a period from six months to two years. Their
services focus on basic education, health care, promotion of
agricultural technology and other fields. So far, 30 provinces,
autonomous regions and municipalities have participated in this
project. Various forms of cooperation between better-developed and
underdeveloped provinces and areas have been created, with
education and health care as the major subjects to work on.
It
is reported that a training base for the application of computer
science will be built in the west region. Volunteers involved in
the poverty-relief relay project will train teachers at the primary
and middle schools supported by the project and schools nearby
which meet the requirements for training so as to promote the
popularization of the knowledge on computer and Internet among
people in poor areas. The project is scheduled to provide training
for a million people in three years. It has started accepting
donation of computers accessible to the Internet from people in all
circles.
(china.org.cn by Wang Qian, July 25, 2002)