On a stormy summer day in 2004, a van full of donated children's
books was forced to stop at a dilapidated primary school off a
mountain road in Fengyang, southwest China's Yunnan Province.
Teachers there thronged to watch.
"They gazed at the books with longing and begged our volunteer
again and again to leave the books for their students," said Li
Xun, an administrator of Smiling Library, a Shanghai-based
non-governmental organization.
A Shanghai high school class donated the books for a poor
primary school some distance farther in the mountain area.
"Beseeched by repeated requests, our volunteer could not help
giving in."
Li is one of the first members of the grass-roots charity, which
collects and sends books to poorly-equipped schools in remote
areas. Like the one in Fengyang, many of them are badly in need of
books that students can read after school.
While State-run charity projects which set up schools do
allocate money for books, most private schools are left uncared
for.
And libraries in some public schools are either not accessible
to children or have books too outdated for them to read, said Shen
Shaoqing, a Smiling Library volunteer in Guoyang, Anhui Province of east China.
"Because of the severe shortage of teachers and facilities, many
schools in those areas teach only material that students taking
national college entrance examinations need," Shen said.
"Parents in many remote areas usually regard education simply as
school curriculum," he said.
"They never bother to buy their kids books other than those most
necessary for class, even if they are not poor."
Li said they once received a letter from a county director in Henan Province asking for a book donation. A
search on the Internet found it is one of the wealthiest counties
in the country.
The director explained that local residents do not usually buy
books.
"They have computers, but not many people know how to use them,"
Li said.
Shen said: "Children there have little knowledge about the world
outside their small village. A senior high school boy with an
excellent performance on his examination does not know anywhere
outside his village except the big cities where his villagers go to
work."
Shen, a graduate of Fudan University and a former electronics
engineer in Shanghai, is now the headmaster of a high school in
Guoyang. Two years ago, he volunteered to teach there, leaving
behind his wife and a 3-year-old son.
As a school coordinator, he helps ensure the recipients of
donations use the books properly and looks for more schools to
support.
Shen said he was considering including another school in a
nearby county on the donation list.
"I have to make sure the school is poor enough with little
chance to get government funding, that the teachers there want the
books and are responsible enough to take care of them and that the
students can reach the books," he said.
Li said that a coordinator once found some donated books were
kept away from kids.
"The teachers explained that the books were so precious that
they were afraid the kids would damage them," she said. "But that
missed the point of sending them."
"For schools that manage the books well, we will send 10 percent
more books the next year."
Li and Pan Lijin, another volunteer, who are both in their late
20s, are among the city's well-educated and fairly well-paid young
people who have a sense of social responsibility and are fortunate
enough to have some time to contribute.
Li just quit her job in a financial services company, and Pan
works in the sales department of a logistics firm.
"People of this group tend to value education very much, and
having an ability to help others brings self-fulfilment," Li
said.
She and Pan both like backpacking.
The idea of donating books caught on among posters to an online
bulletin board named Smile, for backpacking aficionados.
"Backpackers like to explore where they go more deeply than
normal tourists, and getting acquainted with local people,
especially kids, is one of the activities," said Pan, who joined
the organization in early 2004 and is now responsible for
collecting donated books. She always remembers to bring sweets and
pencils on every trip to make friends with the children.
"What impressed me most was once when I gave a kid in Miaojiang,
Guizhou Province, some candy, she asked for a
pencil."
Pan is certainly not alone. Backpackers initiated many of the
country's grass-roots charity organizations or projects that have
started up in recent years, and they have helped fund education to
kids in poor areas.
In mid-2003, Light of Hope, one of the first and largest
grass-roots charity organizations to support education in poor
areas, appealed for book donations for a school it funds.
Xu Feng, one of the two cofounders, and Li collected twice the
number of books needed in a short period of time, and they decided
to start a charity organization of their own and called it the
Smiling Library.
"After the first half-year, we felt it was necessary to set up a
systematic procedure for donors to follow and monitor the whole
process," Pan said.
The website, www.smilinglibrary.org, was launched in early
2004.
Intended donors can log their books, new or used, into the
website database. But rules establish what books are needed and
what are not.
Storybooks, knowledge books, dictionaries and reference books
are among the books that are needed.
The administrators of the organization will assign the donated
books to the neediest school and then tell the donors the name of
the school that received them and its mailing address.
People will know from the website where their books will go and
the arrival dates at the schools.
The administrators of the organization even have a blog to tell
everybody who cares about the library what it does every day.
"People can also send books to designated places in Shanghai and
several other cities including Hangzhou and Ningbo in Zhejiang Province and Suzhou in Jiangsu Province if they are too busy to
follow the procedure," Li said. The addresses of those designated
places can be found on Smiling Library's website.
"But we hope they would make the donations by themselves, which
would get them more involved in the charity business and develop
habits to help others voluntarily," she said.
People who do not have the right kind of books for kids or time
to choose books can contact the library at smilinglibrary@gmail.com
and donate money to buy books. The response will include a list of
books that are purchased with the amount and the invoice.
The choice of books is made carefully.
Lin Xiaoxi, the cofounder of a website, www.hongniba.com.cn,
which discusses and sells children's books, has made suggestions
for the book list and has provided books to the Smiling Library at
a low price.
He set up the website after becoming a father and has been
studying children's books since then. Before that, he was a
lawyer.
Since 2003, the Smiling Library has helped bring nearly 20,000
books to 37 schools in 11 provinces and regions including Yunnan,
Guizhou, Sichuan and Gansu provinces, and Guangxi Zhuang and Xinjiang Uygur autonomous regions, and the
number of its administrators and volunteers has grown from the
original two to 27.
More than 1,000 individuals and more than 20 enterprises,
organizations and schools have donated books or money to buy books
through it.
Li said that the organization has been cautious with publicity.
But people are getting to know it somehow and are joining it.
"We are often moved by people's trust in us," she said.
Kris Lau, a Hong Kong man in his early 40s, made repeated
enquiries by e-mail to offer his help after reading a report on the
library.
"Smiling Library has never urged me to make any donation; it was
purely voluntary," he said. "I was also impressed by the friendly
faces of the organizers."
Lau has donated altogether HK$10,000 (US$1,280) in a short
period of time. He said his mother also donates.
Zhang Yan, a 30-year-old professional in Chengdu, Sichuan
Province, told China Daily that she has donated more than
500 books through the organization since last year.
"I spend one-tenth of my salary almost every month," she
said.
"I think good books are more important than beautiful school
rooms."
Last year, when the organization was recruiting volunteers to
visit the schools it supports in Yunnan and Jiangxi provinces to report how the books are
being used and what books they need most, many people applied.
"We were only able to pay for a hard-sleeper train ticket," Li
said. "They were responsible for all other costs. But they did a
really good job by sending back detailed reports and photos."
(China Daily April 28, 2006)