The Amity Foundation

The Participatory Approach: Amity Forum for project managers

The participatory approach in practice at the Forum

Amity sponsored a “Forum on Capacity Building for Project Managers”, which was held in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, earlier this month. More than 70 people attended the Forum, among them representatives of Peasants’ Associations, staff from local Amity project offices, the director of the Institute of History at the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, Du Juan, the vice director of the Cangyuan Amity Village Development Association, Wei Meiying, and Amity’s assistant general secretary, He Wen. The Forum had two focus areas: firstly, the “participatory approach” used by Amity and its importance for the capacity building of project staff, and secondly, the preservation of cultural traditions in multi-ethnic Yunnan Province.

(more…)

Rural Gansu: What economic crisis?

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.

(more…)

Microloans in a Gansu village

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.

(more…)

New projects launched in Guizhou

Amity and EED, an aid agency of the German Protestant churches, are sponsoring a new integrated development project, which was formally launched in Guanghua Village, Bijie Prefecture, Guizhou Province in March. The project aims at ensuring food safety, boosting agricultural yields, raising ordinary people’s productivity and living standards while protecting the environment, and strengthening local communities’ integrated service capability. Improving the natural conditions and building people’s capacity will ultimately lead to sustainable development of both individuals and society as a whole, of the economy and the environment.

(more…)

Solar cells for a village in Qinghai

Recently, many people gathered at the entrance of the village committee building in Nida, a village in Qinghai Province. They attended a ceremony to mark the delivery of solar cells, which were given by Amity and the Hong Kong-based Nethersole Fund.

(more…)

Higher incomes and a better environment in Inner Mongolia

Grasslands have been deteriorating for decades

Free-roaming sheep nibbling away at the last sprouts of a dying meadow are one reason why people in the grasslands of Wulate Middle Banner, a poor county in Inner Mongolia, are in danger of losing their livelihoods in the future. The grasslands of central Inner Mongolia, once famed to be a vast expanse of waving grass sweeping as far as the horizon, are deteriorating into an inhospitable waste land at a frightening speed. If nothing is done to stop the spread of the desert, the dying ecosystem will cause a stream environmental refugees fleeing from an area four times the size of Germany.

(more…)

Organic Agriculture training course in Inner Mongolia

The Amity Foundation sponsored an organic agriculture training course which was held in Hohhot (the capital of Inner Mongolia) late last month. The three-day course was hosted by the Science and Technology Association of Inner Mongolia. Participants included members of the Science and Technology Association, representatives of farmers’ associations and representatives of farmers. They came from Dalate, Wulate, Wuchuan, Arong, Naiman, Hexigten, Duolun, Tuoketuo, Zhungge’er and Hohhot.

(more…)

Amity solar stove cooking contest in Qinghai

A stew of potatoes and beef, sweet-and-sour cabbage, deep-fried chicken fillet … Women from Chaergoumen Village in Huzhu County, Qinghai, put their cooking skills on display. A cooking contest, initiated by Amity’s local partner organisation, was held here in April and a wide variety of mouthwatering dishes were cooked on solar and biogas stoves. Fifty villagers and thirty students from the local school took part in the contest. Its aim was to promote the use of environmentally friendly stoves by families in rural Qinghai.

(more…)

354 schools built by Amity

In spite of government policies to develop the poor western parts of China, which have been implemented in recent years, there is a huge gap in economic and social development between Eatern and Western China. One of the results of this is that education in the west has fallen far behind, above all in impoverished, mountainous regions. Here, history and geography are contributing factors to underdevelopment. Education is short of funds here; school buildings are often primitive and derelict, qualified teachers are in short supply, hardly any teaching material and equipment is available. Without proper maintenance, hundreds of school buildings have become unsafe to use, posing great dangers to the lives of teachers and students.

(more…)

Using the internet to help orphans: “Action e 10,000″

Some 570,000 Chinese children are orphans. 80% of them live in the countryside – in poor, underdeveloped regions where there is no infrastructure to help them. Almost one-third of all orphans are in urgent need of help but do not receive any support.

The Amity Foundation has provided financial support to almost 6000 orphans since 2002. In order to boost help for orphans, Amity and a group of volunteers began working on “Action e 10,000″ this spring – the first internet-based help project for Chinese orphans. Its aim is to mobilise internet users for the support of 10,000 orphans in China’s rural areas.

The “Action e 10,000″ website is already up and running. A big event is planned for the official launch of the project on Saturday, 17 November 2007, at a Nanjing bookstore. “Action e 10,000″ is supported by newspapers, TV and radio stations as well as several business enterprises in Nanjing.