Poverty alleviation aided by colleges

Teachers and students from colleges and universities have given full play to the advantages brought by talent, human resources, and science and technology. As such, they have become a new force in poverty alleviation and rural vitalization, according to the Ministry of Education.

All 75 colleges and universities directly administered by the ministry have been involved in poverty alleviation work and are actively participating in the national rural vitalization project.

In the past 10 years, the universities have invested in or introduced 4.44 billion yuan ($616 million) to poverty alleviation projects, said Liu Changya, director of the ministry's department of development and planning.

In the past 10 years, the universities have helped train 116,400 teachers in previously impoverished regions, and they have also provided training for 776,000 grassroots government officials and technicians, he added.

Since 2016, the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, has sent 38 medical experts to the Zhongba County Hospital in the Tibet autonomous region. Situated in the mountains at an average altitude of 5,000 meters, Zhongba was in great need of medical resources.

The experts have treated more than 17,000 people and performed surgeries on 288 people, including a cesarean section at the highest altitude in the world in 2016.

They also invited eight local doctors to Guangzhou on study tours, who have become specialists in their respective fields at the hospital in Zhongba.

In 2017, the doctors brought three local children with congenital heart disease and one with extensive burn scars to Guangzhou for free treatment. Hospital staff donated more than 100,000 yuan for the young patients.

Since 2013, Zhejiang University in Hangzhou has sent 52 graduate students to Jingdong Yi autonomous county, Yunnan province, to teach at a local secondary vocational school for one year each. Moreover, every summer vacation, the university has sent more than 100 students to teach at the vocational school.

In addition, the students have raised 3.9 million yuan in donations, benefiting more than 6,000 primary and secondary school students in the county.