Plenty of Love but running short of Hope

Besides the vocational school and Saturday school, the Love and Hope Center for Migrants runs a literacy class for women and also helps train migrant women for jobs as ayis (maids).

Its 42-year-old director Jenna Kim, whose parents were second generation Korean War refugees in China, says she learned the importance of education at a very young age.

Kim first became involved with migrant schools as a graduate student in education at Beijing Normal University in 2001. When the principal of a 130-pupil migrant school near the East 3rd Ring Road asked her to take over, citing her husband's illness, she did not hesitate. The school moved to Cui Ge Zhuang in 2004 but two years later, the local authority ordered the closure of all 11 migrant schools in the area, in line with increased pre-Olympics security measures.