The Amity Foundation

Beate Engelen, from the Hong Kong office of the Amity Foundation, has sent this update from her visit to our project sites in western China:

I have travelled in Gansu for several days now, investigating Amity’s poverty alleviation projects in the poorest, drought-ridden south-western parts of the province. Usually, I ask the farmers about their economic situation, especially about family members who are migrant workers. All families here depend on their migrating family members when it comes to earning cash. Their fields at home yield just enough to feed the hungry crowd at home. Farming in south-western Gansu is all subsistence farming, and as farmers, local people have no access to any markets - for the simple reason that they have nothing to sell.

Continue reading ‘Rural Gansu: What economic crisis?’

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Beate Engelen, of Amity’s Hong Kong office, reports from her latest field trip:

During my recent trip to Amity project sites in Gansu Province, I visited a poor village in Anding near Dingxi. By far the biggest problem in this area is the lack of water. People collect snow in winter so they have enough drinking water in summer. The village I visited has its own well, but it is located on the far side of a mountain.

Continue reading ‘Microloans in a Gansu village’

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Guests united to rebuild Sichuan, symbolically adding bricks to a wall

The Hong Kong office of the Amity Foundation held a gala dinner on 9 May to raise funds for its ongoing reconstruction and rehabilitation work in Sichuan Province. Exactly a year ago, in the early afternoon of 12 May 2008, parts of the province, as well as of the neighbouring provinces of Shaanxi and Gansu, were hit by a devastating earthquake. Nearly 70,000 people lost their lives, many more were injured, hundreds of thousands lost their homes and saw their livelihoods destroyed. Amity started disaster relief work on the very same day and has been involved in reconstruction and rehabilitation work in the region ever since, focussing its efforts on the village of Woyun near Mianzhu City.

Watch videos here.

Picture gallery: Photos from the fundraising dinner

Continue reading ‘Fundraising dinner for rebuilding Sichuan’

A travelling photo exhibition, titled “Reach out for reconstruction, let love go on” and “Field of Hope”, will open tomorrow, 1 May, in Nanjing. The exhibition, initiated by the Amity Foundation and the Nanjing City Volunteer Association, marks the 1st anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Sichuan on 12 May 2008. It will at first be on display at Nanjing Library and Pioneer Bookstore. After May Day it will travel on to the Suning Milky Way store, the drum tower campus and Pukou campus of Nanjing University, Nanjing Foreign Language School, the High School Affiliated with Nanjing Normal University and Jinling Middle School. It is advertised in a video clip shown at some 700 locations and will be on display until the end of May.

Watch a picture gallery here.

Continue reading ‘Earthquake photo exhibition in Nanjing’

Gary Macdonald with his student's students

What do students of Amity teachers do during holidays, when there are no classes? Some of them go back to their home villages to work as English tutors.  Gary Macdonald, who has been an Amity teacher for many years, spent the Lunar New Year holiday in a small village in Gansu Province. He has sent this letter:

During the Lunar New Year holiday I was the guest of one of my students in his small village. Mali Village (马力村) is one of many small communities hidden deep in the folds of mountain terrain. Patches of tired soil serve the continuing generations of subsistence farmers. There, the beauty of nature may well mask the reality of poverty and daily struggle familiar to its inhabitants.

Continue reading ‘Students as teachers: a letter from Gansu’

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Students from Suzhou Singapore International School (SSIS) visited Henancun School in Nanjing, a school for migrant workers’ children that Amity has been supporting since 2004. The group of 18 students and 2 supervisors stayed with kids aged between 4 and 6 in kindergarten class for a whole day in March and had interactive activities in English. The students, who are from the U.S.A., Singapore, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, were well-prepared with songs, games, and small teaching items. They showed great care, skill, patience and creativity during the activities. According to Diwen Goh, a 15-year-old leader of the group, they had practiced several times in local kindergartens in Suzhou. John Miskelly, a maths teacher from SSIS who served as program supervisor, said it was great to see the students so dedicated in this mission, and expected the students could understand the work of teachers better.

Continue reading ‘International students teach kindergarten children’

At a gynaecologist's clinic in rural Gansu

Women’s health in rural China typically focuses on pregnancy and birth control. Except for reproductive-health reasons, women go to see a doctor only when they get seriously ill - not earlier.

That health check-ups for women can prevent diseases is widely unknown in today’s rural China. Now, time has come for preventive healthcare to be introduced to women in some rural communities in Gansu Province. Amity has provided funds and expertise for over 16,000 women in Lintao County to be screened for health problems and treated, mostly free of charge, if irregularities are found.

Continue reading ‘Free check-ups for women in Gansu’

Amity and the Hong Kong-based Heep Hong Society held a training session for teachers to autistic children in Nanjing to mark “World Autism Day” on 2 April. The event attracted experts from more than 30 institutions in the provinces of Zhejiang, Shandong, Fujian and Jiangsu, the city of Shanghai and other places. Over 100 people attended the training session.

Continue reading ‘World Autism Day training session’

On January 12-17, Amity held its 2009 Amity Teachers Winter Conference in Lanzhou, Gansu Province. January in Lanzhou presented us with chilly but friendly sunny days, so we were able to keep a traditional but always welcome part of our Winter Conference: Our group made a one-day field trip to Dingxi, a neighbouring city to Lanzhou, to visit Amity’s community-based projects.

Continue reading ‘Amity Teachers Conference and the Summer Tutoring Program’