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Yunnan

Pursuant to the books donation (see ‘Results 2003’) to the Kunming-City School for Deaf and Blind Children, the Committee launched a new project with this school as of September 2005. Catherine Ayreau visited the place and met the Principal, Mrs Zhong and the teachers.

The project is divided in two parts:
1. sponsor deaf boarding students coming from poor families,
2. provide hearing aids.

The Principal selected, Bi Qiongmei, a 14 years old girl as our first sponsored student. She is deaf and comes from a remote mountain village where her parents are farmers.

The Chinese government pays the tuition fees for handicapped children. The Committee covers other expenses such as accommodation (dormitory), meals, clothes, pocket money, medicine when needed and transportation home twice a year for Spring Festival and summer vacation. Usually, this is paid by the family. However, very poor families cannot bear such a burden, so they reduce all these expenses --with the exception of the dormitory fees-- to the bare minimum, putting the child’s health at risk. We hope our help will provide our sponsored students better conditions for their studies.