Kentucky helps students flourish

A visit to a small village leads to a journey toward new hope through better education

In 2005, Betty Cutts, an elementary education expert from Morehead, Kentucky, visited the city's sister city Yangshuo — a small town in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region — to teach in a summer English camp.

She soon realized that a number of children from the relatively underdeveloped rural part of the country couldn't afford tuition and were on the verge of having to leave school, however much they desired an education.

Cutts' visit led to the establishment of a charity project that has funded the educational needs of more than 1,500 Chinese students for 14 years and counting. It has contributed to the 25-year friendship between the two cities as part of the extensive interpersonal exchanges through educational and cultural projects.

It all started when Cutts was introduced to a young girl in Yangshuo, who had just lost a parent, had a younger brother, and whose family could afford to send only one child to school.

"That touched my heart," Cutts told China Daily in a recent interview. And her immediate reaction was to take $25 — one semester's worth of tuition in 2005 — out of her own purse. But she also realized that it was not a sustainable model to support hundreds of children seeking an education there.

She then founded an organization, Blessing Hands, which was incorporated in Kentucky in 2006 as a public charity. It started by helping more than 250 students from Yangshuo, with the assistance of the local educational department.

By 2017, it had supported almost 1,500 students from five Chinese provinces, with a total budget of more than $800,000.

"This is what I see in China — they really value education," said Cutts, who is now the director of the organization, adding that Chinese students who receive their help "are going to be determined to go to colleges, are determined to excel in education", and they are making good investments in people "who really want to learn".

The first girl Cutts had helped, for example, went all the way to medical school, and Blessing Hands supported her until she became a doctor.

Over the years, Cutts also has witnessed changes in China, in Yangshuo specifically, in the education sector and beyond.

With the nine-year compulsory education system proliferating across China, the government has been considering extending it to 12 years, which has been tested in several places across the country.

Fast-paced economic development has brought many changes to Yangshuo.

"Yangshuo has risen out of poverty, really — so we have to find other ways to relate to them," said Cutts.

Cutts has been seeing less need among Chinese students on funding and scholarships to get an education, and over the years, Blessing Hands has been focusing more on supporting minority groups and diversifying the assistance it provides.

Blessing Hands launched a water-purification project for primary schools in 2010, and has partnered with Chinese organizations to help promote computer literacy in those schools.

Yangshuo and Morehead also have engaged in years-long cultural exchanges, introducing Chinese art pieces to Morehead being one of them.

In a 2016 art show, 73 watercolor paintings were sent from Yangshuo for exhibit in local galleries, and Cutts said half of them were sold.

And in 2007, almost 100 wheelchairs were donated to Yangshuo from the people of Morehead.

While the two cities have had a friendship for more than two decades, they officially established a sister-city relationship in 2011. Cutts now serves as the treasurer of Morehead Sister Cities.