In an upcoming drive to comprehensively help poverty-ridden college
students, a non-profit Chinese organization plans to focus on their
mental health.
At
a news conference organized in Beijing Tuesday by the China
Foundation for Poverty Alleviation, He Daofeng, secretary-general
of the organization, said that the project, which starts on Sept.
1, will focus on the mental health of financially-disadvantaged
students.
Statistics show that at the end of 2001, China had 13 million
college students, of which 2.6 million were poverty-ridden
students, whose monthly financial aid from their families or other
sources was less than 150 yuan (about US$18).
A
survey conducted in 20 colleges show that the monthly income for
financially-disadvantaged students was even less than 60 yuan
(about US$7) in some extreme cases.
Malnutrition and sickness increased psychological pressures and
placed mental barriers against participating in public activities,
leaving them on the fringes of school life with a sense of
uncertainty about the future.
Zhang Minxuan, an expert from Shanghai Teachers
University, said that economic poverty can be resolved with
prompt aid. "Mental poverty, however, may affect one's lifelong
development if it is not properly tackled," he said.
To
solve the problem, the foundation plans to collect funds from
individual donors in order to financially support activities to
help students who have psychological problems, he said.
Each beneficiary could gain a yearly assistance to a maximum of
2,000 yuan (US$241) for two to four years, he said.
To
have a thorough understanding about the conditions of students
suffering from poverty, the foundation is recruiting 100 volunteers
to contact the families of these students, mostly in China's
underdeveloped regions.
The foundation proposes to set up charitable societies in major
universities so that any individual donor will find basic
information about needy college students on the foundation's
official website.
The financial aid is expected to foster the sense of social
responsibilities and self-esteem and self-confidence of the
recipients, Zhang said.
(Xinhua News
Agency August 7, 2002)