Empowering women

Liu Linlin is a sophomore at Capital Normal University, however, she is much busier than her classmates.

After school, in addition to being a volunteer teacher, environment protection volunteer and English volunteer for the Beijing Olympics, and earning money from part-time jobs to aid four disadvantaged students, she works on a project to aid rural Chinese females in Northwest China's Gansu province.

Avon's Hello Tomorrow Fund supports the project.     

"I am trying to provide psychological and humanitarian care and material assistance to rural girls to help them develop proper gender awareness, build up their confidence, broaden their horizons so they can enjoy a better self-development and a better future," Liu says.

She says China's traditional and feudalistic preference for men over women has spurred her to concentrate on rural women, who, she says, "are prone to inferiority complexes lack knowledge of themselves and of self-protection and are more vulnerable.

"Under the current education system, schools have no courses specially designed for females, while the preference for men remains strong in rural communities," says Liu.

As one of the 10 winners of Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund, she received a 10,000 yuan prize as the start-up fund at the end of last year.

"It is our hope that a long-term partnership between Beijing and the visited areas can help draw more public interest in the development of women in the rural areas," says Liu.

The fund, set up by Avon Products Inc on March 8, 2007, last International Women's Day, aims to empower women and improve society by providing individuals with cash awards that will allow them to pursue a project in one of two areas: community service and business development.

"The Hello Tomorrow Award provides Chinese women a platform to realize their dreams. We believe that empowering women is the best way to improve society and change the world. We cannot ignore the power of women," says S.K. Kao, president of Avon China.

Another Hello Tomorrow award winner, Chen Ye says she wants to help women plan successful careers. "My dream has been to bring in successful older women to share their experiences with young women. Our hope is to help young women, particularly college students, to develop their own career plans, better understand their own strengths and potential challenges in their future careers. We also hope that what we are doing can help advance college-level career-planning programs," says Chen.

How can women move along their career paths? Chen has been thinking about this for years.

College education in China lacks career planning and guidance. There is, in particular, no precedence for female-focused career education.

"As a senior, I have had profound personal experience in this," Chen says. "In developing career plans, female students have limited access to information and the information available to them is piecemeal and unsystematic. My project, therefore, precisely aims to develop a career guidance system for female students and help them better encounter potential career challenges," says Chen.

Her project will be initiated in the first half of this year by hosting salons and forums at universities in Shanghai where successful women will be brought in to share their success stories with female students.

Chen believes that apart from giving the women more confidence in their future development and more confidence as independent career women, her project can also help them make the right choices rather than losing a sense of direction and self-identity in the hustle and bustle around them.

"With the Hello Tomorrow Award, I will make my dream a reality. Thanks to Avon, applicants are gathered, scattered powers combined, and more people united around a noble cause," Chen says.

The winners also include three male participants of Hello Tomorrow. Li Yuefeng is one of them.

The middle school painting teacher hopes to use his award to "take a photo for mothers and their children". It targets more than 50 pairs of poverty-stricken mothers and children.

"This project is designed to advocate a sprit of charity and a culture of gratitude and filial piety. We take photos for mothers and children in order to pass on this spirit and bring them happiness and joy. I believe they will cherish these pictures for the rest of their lives," says Li.

"Many of us have the heart but not the resources. That is where Hello Tomorrow helps. I am thankful its material and spiritual support. What a person can achieve is always limited. I hope that Hello Tomorrow can continue to give us material and spiritual support that will sustain our charity cause," he adds.

"As the mother of two children, I deeply feel that women have the power to change the world. Today,5 million of Avon sales representatives are working hard in over 100 countries and they contributed a lot to improving the lives of their families and the situations in their communities. The dream of our Avon people is to provide economic support for more women in the world by launching the Hello Tomorrow project, helping them to realize economic independent and obtain more social resources, so that everyone of them can achieve a better future," says Andrea Jung, CEO of Avon.

(China Daily 03/10/2008 page8)