The Amity Foundation

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.

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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.

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Garlic fertilizer delivered to Woyun Village

Delivery of organic fertilizer has started in Woyun, the village in Sichuan Province where Amity’s reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts are focused. Farmers grow a lot of garlic in the region, which needs a special kind of fertilizer. Some 50 kilograms of fertilizer per mu of land are needed (1 mu is about 667 square meters, or 1/15 of a hectare). Enough fertilizer for all garlic-growing families in Woyun Village be delivered by the end of this week. Villagers have been eagerly awaiting the delivery trucks and helping to unload them.

Danzhuang in Qinghai has a new school

Construction of the new primary school building in Danzhuang, Shidacang County (Qinghai Province) was completed last month. Danzhuang is a small village in a mountainous, almost barren region, whose inhabitants are Tibetans. Almost all of them are poor – average annual income per head is around CNY 1000 (ca. US$ 145). Its primary school was built in 1982. The building wasn’t well maintained because there was never enough money for this, so over time it started literally falling to pieces and was officially categorised as very unsafe.

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Winter clothes for children and teachers in Guangji

Christian volunteers from Wuxi City (Jiangsu Province) donated 1597 new school uniforms for students and teachers in Guangji, a township in the centre of Sichuan’s earthquake region. With temperatures dropping and winter drawing near, local students’ lack of adequate clothing had become very obvious. Amity Foundation staffers had paid a visit to the church in Wuxi City in July this year. Talking to church workers, they found that members of the congregation were eager to help people in the area struck by the devastating 12 May earthquake. Amity then set out to identify a school in Sichuan whose students would profit from the help on offer, which was a donation of clothes.

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Quilts for earthquake victims

Amity volunteers distributed quilts in Sichuan

The Amity Foundation has recently distributed 4000 padded quilts, quilt covers and bedsheets in the counties of Mao and Songpan (Sichuan Province), which were seriously affected by the 12 May earthquake, in order to help local people to tide over the winter.