Kids helping kids: Building schools in China

Ten-year-old Lu Yang is a shy, serious boy who lives a life of severe poverty in remote interior China. His small village, surrounded by eroded hills and only reachable by one treacherous road, is a place that time forgot. Farmers still plough the fields with oxen, and whole families exist on a meagre $120 a year. Every morning after his parents leave to work in the fields, Lu sets off to school along a dirt path past his neighbours' mud-brick houses, often sharing the walk with village pigs and chickens.

Nine thousand kilometres and 12 time zones away, Michaela Chen, a gregarious 15-year-old who is passionate about the environment, lives the life typical of many Canadian teenagers. Her stay-at-home mom, Angela, packs her lunch, buys her clothes and takes her back and forth from their home in Richmond Hill, Ont., to Unionville High School.

Lu and Michaela come from two completely different worlds but they have one important connection: Michaela and her fellow students at Unionville High School raised $3,500 two years ago, enough to build a new school in China's Gansu province, where Lu lives. They raised the money for Free the Children (FTC), a Canadian charity that encourages kids to help finance the building of schools for children in other countries with the belief that an education can change a child's life. Because of the fund-raising efforts of Michaela and other Canadian kids, Lu and his classmates now attend school in a new red-brick building with electricity -- a far cry from their old mud-brick school that was lit with candles and in such disrepair that many parents kept their children home for fear the roof would cave in on them.

The China connection
It was no accident that Michaela and her fellow students chose to direct their donations to China. Most of the 20 members of the FTC chapter that they belong to are Asian in a school that draws from a community where many Asian families have made their home. Many of these second- and third-generation Canadian kids have a special interest in understanding and helping a part of the world from which their parents and grandparents have come.

Last summer Angela suggested that it was time for her daughter to understand the hardship of her grandparents' generation. "My mom suggested I get their stories on videotape," says Michaela. So she visited her dad's parents, who live nearby, and started asking questions with the camera rolling. Her grandfather told her about an older brother in China whose life was forever altered when he was forced into military service and denied an education. It brought home for Michaela the value of helping kids go to school. "It's good that we're helping with education because it can stop other problems that come from poverty," she says. "We know that there is lots of AIDS in rural China and AIDS can be lessened by education."

To raise the funds to build schools in China, Michaela and the rest of the group held a 30-hour fast, securing pledges from other students. Their original goal was to raise $1,200 -- enough for desks and chairs for one classroom -- but when they collected $2,500, they decided to keep fund-raising to reach the $3,500 needed to build a new classroom. They expanded their efforts to include asking local merchants for donations.

With so much in the news about a hot Chinese economy, not all students in the school were convinced at first that their fund-raising efforts should be focused on China. So the group put up posters to explain the gap between rich and poor in the country. "The rural areas are very poor," says Michaela.

Click here to view more pictures from Christine's trip to China.

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