Funding a better future for rural education
BEIJING - Students at Hongban Elementary School used to bring both a schoolbag and a woven bag into the classroom, the latter filled with potatoes, corn cobs and charcoal to make lunch at school.
But financial aid to the school in Southwest China's Guizhou province has now changed the school's dining arrangements for good. A kitchen with refrigerators and disinfection equipment now helps to provide students with nutritious meals.
For several years, government bodies and NGOs have been making efforts to help fund and improve schools in poor rural regions. Nutritional programs have improved the diets of rural students in half the country since 2011, with the central government spending almost 160 billion yuan ($25 billion) on 134,000 schools.