Help the country's migrant workers help themselves

You see them climbing up and down scaffoldings, coaxing office towers and shopping malls up from the earth. You see them eating simple meals outside makeshift dormitories near the construction sites. You see them cleaning the streets, repairing the pavement, watering flowers and lawns in parks, carrying furniture, collecting garbage and helping the middle class tend to their household chores.

They are China's migrant workers, people who have left their rural hometowns for jobs in the cities. More often than not, they are engaged in manual labor.

But beyond the fact that there are millions of them out there, few people know much about this key stratum of society the things they want, the services they need and the values they hold.