Quilts, winter clothing, schoolbags and books piled up the small
campus of a school for migrant workers' children in Haidian
District in northwestern Beijing as the Spring Festival, or the
Chinese lunar new year is drawing near.
"This is going to be a most memorable
Spring Festival," a schoolboy said at Wednesday's donation
ceremony held at Xingzhi School for Migrants' Children. "We hope
we'd be able to repay your kindness some day."
More than 500 people were present at the ceremony, including
migrants' children, their teachers and donors.
At the back of the merry crowd was a teacher who kept choking
back her tears. "Some of my students never had a cotton-padded
coat," she said, giving her surname as Shi. "They remind me of my
own childhood bitterness."
Shi said one of her students is a junkman's son. "All his shoes
and clothing came from the garbage bin."
The donation was part of a citywide campaign to extend new year
greetings to migrants' children who cannot go home for the Chinese
New Year, or the Spring Festival, that falls on January 29. The
campaign was launched by China Youth
Development Foundation, Beijing Youth
Development Foundation and Beijing News, a metropolitan
newspaper.
By Wednesday, the organizers had received donations valued at
480,000 yuan (US$60,000), which they would present to 5,100
children from several migrant children's schools in the city.
"We can do very little to help the migrant workers' families,"
said Lin Yu, an employee of Kerry Oil and Grain Business
Development Co.," but we hope the campaign will arouse the sympathy
of the whole society and more city dwellers will voluntarily help
the migrants."
Lin's company has donated 2,000 barrels of soybean oil to the
migrants' families in Beijing this year.
Besides the material donations, China Youth Development
Foundation has opened a special bank account to receive cash
donations for migrants in poverty, said an official surnamed
Xiang.
Liu Yulan, a Beijinger living in the US, was the first to make a
cash donation, Xiang said, adding "she donated 2,000 yuan
(US$250)."
The foundation will request schools and parents to acknowledge
receipts of the donation and each child will mail the donor a
greeting card to ensure all the donations have gone where they
target, said Xiang.
The foundation completed a survey among 360 migrant children in
Beijing prior to the Chinese New Year, and the results are
"appalling", said Tu Meng, the organization's
secretary-general.
It found many migrant families in Beijing are in poverty: about
6 percent of the children surveyed live in slums; one out of every
10 children feel cold at home and most families cannot even afford
a quilt for everyone.
Of the 360 children surveyed, at least 240 said they will not go
home for the Chinese New Year, either because their parents have to
keep working or because their families cannot afford the trip.
Though 70 percent of these children were happy to stay in
Beijing, at least 22 percent said they feel miserable because they
cannot afford the delicious food, lovely toys and appealing tourist
destinations that are so available to local kids.
The foundation also encourages urban families to take migrant
children home for the holiday, as 90 percent of the children
surveyed said they wish to make friends with their city peers.
It has started receiving applications at its website
www.cydf.org.cn and at its service hotline 010 6404 9500.
According to statistics from the fifth national census in 2000,
China has 19.81 million migrant children, nearly 20 percent of the
total migrant population.
(Xinhua News Agency January 27, 2006)