Three days before our VP, Waisiu, return to Hangzhou, some of us has a chance to enjoy a dinner with him on Wednesday, July 21st.  In the middle of the week, only three of the guys have time to show up at Bellevue's Toys Cafe.  See photo.

The two and a half hour conversation covered many subjects from CTEF projects, to general economic and trade conditions in China.  Significant topics are the need for CTEF to upgrade thw web page; to better manage the resources in our board; to how the housing prices in China affecting the emerging new middle class; and on the trend in hiring for the educated; to the long term goal for CTEF in China.

In short, we had a very productive time.

Dennis

各位热心的同事和朋友：

看看，我们捐建的村小已经初现雏形了，这是我们在村小施工当地的监督方王校长寄来的最新照片。

• 在建工地

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  • 如照片所示，村小主体工程完成四分之三，砖墙接近完成。
  • 由于四川近来阴雨连绵，工地建设进展不如预想顺利。不过经再三确认，工程队保证今夏九月前竣工以确保下学期投入使用。

• 后续计划

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  • 在村小主体工程完成验收后，我会联系明日中华教育基金会汇给王校长五万元人民币，由王校长分批付给施工方。
  • 大家可能注意到，我们在募捐倡议书里提过，准备在学校的介绍铭牌刻上捐款达到或超过1000元（或200美元）的热心朋友的名字。随着学校的建设进展，现在需要征集捐的款达到或超过1000元（或200美元）的捐助人对此的意愿以及镌刻的姓名（比如以您可爱女儿的名义）。
  • 微软亚太研发集团关于公益慈善活动的七月初通讯，将会介绍这一项目，这是公司其他同事对于我们这一努力的认可，到时大家可以骄傲地向家人、朋友和其他同事展示宣传。感谢Jane Zheng的辛勤工作和对于项目的支持。
  • 提议原计划七月组织的项目讨论会延迟到八月底九月初，讨论大家关心的话题，包括第二阶段募捐、捐款使用、实地考察和支教安排。原因如下：

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  •  
    • 不少同事安排在七月份休假，所以在七月份组织项目讨论会和募捐的效果可能会不够理想。
    • 人力资源部将在九月初组织一次微软上海园区范围的爱心拍卖/义卖活动，形式与去年STBC为地震组织的爱心拍卖/义卖相似，我正与组织者协商争取将此项目作为受益项目。在此之前安排一次项目讨论会，有利于我们在爱心拍卖/义卖活动中更好地展示项目，争取人气，招募更多九月份去村小实地考察和志愿支教的朋友。

以前的项目进度报告，您可以在此找到：http://sharepointasia/sites/SichuanSchool。如果您有任何建议和意见，请联系我。

谢谢!

Hi, dear warmhearted colleagues and friends:

Look, you can see the rough shape of our village school now! J The photos are sent by Mr. Wang, the local supervisor for the school construction:

• Construction

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  • As shown in photos, ¾ of the main framework has been completed. The brick walls have almost been done.
  • The progress is a little bit slower than expected because there were many rainy days there. But I double checked with Mr. Wang that the construction team promises to complete the school construction before this September so that it can be used of the coming semester.

• Next Step

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  • After main framework is finished and checked, I will contact CTEF to send another 50K RMB to Mr. Wang, and then Mr. Wang will give it to construction team in different batches.
  • As you known, the “Call for Donation” letter mentioned that we plan to make a plaque listing the donor names above $200 (or 1000 RMB). Along with the school building process, now we’d like to check whether and whose name you wish to put on the plaque for yourself, e.g. it can be in the name of your lovely daughter.
  • Microsoft Asia-Pacific R&D group will have a charity focus newsletter at the beginning of the coming July, introducing this project. This is truly a recognition from other colleague for our effort. Please feel free to share the story with your family members, friends and other colleagues with proud! And thanks to Jane Zheng’s hard work on this and support for our project.
  • Propose to postpone the “July” project meeting to the end of August, discussing all topics interesting to you, such as fund raising, donation usage, school visit and volunteering teaching arrangement. The reasons behind this change are:

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    • Some colleagues have arranged July as vacation time, so the meeting and the 2^nd milestone of “call for donation” might not go as well as wished.
    • HR department is planning a charity auction event on early September, across all groups in Microsoft Shanghai campus. It will be pretty much like the one we had for earthquake last year in STBC. I’m discussing with the event organizer, and working on making our project as the target beneficiary. If scheduling a project discussion meeting right before that, it will help us prepare well to showcase the project, earn more eyeball and potentially recruit more friends for the school visiting and volunteering teaching on September.

You can find all previous status email on http://sharepointasia/sites/SichuanSchool. Feel free to contact me if you have concerns, suggestions or questions.

Thanks.

Zhen Wei

(This is an article written by a 4th grader from Guizhou province CongJiang county. A common thing like a garbage can be special to a kid in the rural area and he is inspired by this garbage can donated by CTEF.)

       谷坪乡中心小学四年级杨文平的作文

以前我刚来到中心校读书的时候,我不知道什么是垃圾桶,我就去问我的哥哥,那时我哥哥读四年级而我读二年级.我就问:哥哥,什么是垃圾桶啊？ 哥哥说，你不知道 什么是垃圾桶吗？那我就告诉你垃圾桶很重要的，我说，说来听一下。我哥说：你吃的那些糖啊、水果皮啊、你都丢进那里去。我回答说我丢进那个桶，我哥说，你都丢进那个桶，那个桶就是垃圾桶。啊，原来垃圾桶就是那个桶啊！到这里我才知道垃圾桶有什么用啊，可以带来让人感动的一件高兴的事情。

(From Editor Cheary Huang)  对于当地的学生写作水平来说，这个学生写得已经很不错了，我没有修改过。感谢明日中华捐助的垃圾桶，让这些孩子得到一些启发。)

(Dennis & Xin)

It was a community celebration held at the Banaroya Hall in downtown Seattle last Saturday, May 29, 2010. This event is about the Shanghai 2010 EXPO and the Guangzhou Asia Games later this year.  It is also a celebration of Chinese Performing arts and traditional culture. CTEF was invited by CHIME, a co-sponsor of the event, to host a display stand there.  In the magnificent lobby of the concert hall, CTEF presented the new 1+1 Sponsorship program as well as highlighted the Guizhou school uniform project.  We have plenty of flyers and newsletters for distribution to the event attendants.  Yilei Wang and Cathie Dai were the two volunteers managing the games for children and grown ups alike to attract the crowd.  There were many serious inquires about CTEF and its missions.  Events like this gave CTEF a lot of exposure to the general public and a fun way for our volunteers to spend an afternoon.

CTEF 9th Annual Dinner was held on May 1st at China Harbor Restaurant.  President Su reported the progress of CTEF’s work.  Despite the adverse economic condition and reduced fund, CTEF keeps on supporting the school and library projects. In addition, CTEF has launched a new program to help individual students that are in need of help.  CTEF is currently sponsoring 150 students in the Sichuan Earthquake zone and helping 20 middle school students.  Please contact scholarship@ctef.org if you are interested.

The Daughters of China group attended the annual dinner. These girls were adopted from China. Each year, they bring their beautiful shows as well as donations from their fund raising projects.  Thank you, Daughters of China!

The CTEF 9th annual dinner was reported in Seattle Chinese Post:

For more pictures from the annual dinner, please visit our Facebook Page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/CTEF/113881218648282.

As most people know, CTEF is a Seattle based non-profit organization and most of volunteers are based in US. However, a significant part of our operation is in China, and we are counting on our hard working local volunteers and many other NGO partners.

I start to deeply appreciate our local volunteers' work when we start the "5.12 letter project".  This is a project intended to get more people involved to help the kids affected by 5.12 Sichuan earthquake. This project is later developed into a dedicated scholarship project. When it is initiated, we drafted a two-page background information survey and personal information disclosure form.  I naively thought this is a big part of job done.

However, I did not realize at the time that the majority of our audience in China do not understand the reason why we need further information after two years and what kind of information we need. Further, they did not fully understand "personal information disclosure" clause.  Thanks goes to our volunteer, Fang Fang. She called each of the 150 students. She explained to them why we need to collect more background information, patiently communicates what the new project is about and describes the implication for the personal information disclosure. She then coordinated collection of our two-page survey form to the students. She went extra step to go through all the letters,  read, and summarized each letter. This makes our work much easier. She further compiled an excel spreadsheet of student data.  In fact, Fang has been working with us for a long long time already on many different projects.

I never realized such a small step in a project can mean so much work...We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude... Thank you, Fang Fang and many other volunteers that help us to this date!

Mr. Wan (Tingdi Wan) is one of our volunteers in China and he recently brought us the story of the volunteer work from New Star cultural&folk art group. He and other members in this group has been working very closely with CTEF for years. 

During these years, the group has visited 9 towns and villages in Jingtai county alone and traveled thousands of miles in Gansu province.  These volunteers have conducted numerous in depth surveys for many schools: building & facility condition, student needs and faculty status.  From these data, the group analysis, compares and recommends schools to CTEF for support with detailed project proposal. Members of the group go beyond their means to keep track of progress of each school project, monitor project quality, participate the inspection and lead
all the follow up work. With their help, CTEF has completed 17 school projects in the region and there are 3 more in progress. In addition, the group is  coordinating a mobile library of more than 5,000 books.

The group brings songs and happiness to everywhere they visit.  The smiles on faces of these kids are lifelong touches. Their work also motivated many more people to get involved -- help comes in all different ways: labor, donation or building materials.

Thank you!

Every action in our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.  ~Edwin Hubbel Chapin

(New Star cultural&folk art group)

(Mr. Wan who has given us priceless help.)

There are many ways you can do to help us, and make a child feel special and loved.

We have launched a new project designed to give the young victims in 5.12 earthquake emotional encouragement and guidance in addition to our financial support. This is part of our continuous effort to help the earthquake zone. After our initial assistance, all of 150 students we sponsored write us thank-you letters. Many students also asked us questions about school, life and future. We realize that there are many other things we need to do and could do apart from financial assistance.

Here is a quote from a student in recent letter to our volunteer pen-pal,

“Though I grow up in a poor family and cannot enjoy the comfortable life as many other children of the similar age, but I have something else. I have the encouragement and help from you and many loving friends. I am lucky because I feel inspired everyday and because I know you are always there for me.”

Thank you, all the volunteer pen-pals,   the benefit you bring to the students is a life-long miracle.

Drinking status

Gaoyu Elementary School has 42 students. It has no water supply. There is a reservoir in the village which is 200 meters away from school. The students have to fetch water from this reservoir.

Gaoyu village is lack of water due to its high altitude. More than 400 people in the village have to share one well, so water resource is limited. The village reservoir is dry during fall and winter. People then have to go to another well which is farther away and can only collect less than half ton of water in 24 hours.

The village and the school are both very interested in water diversion project. This project not only benefits the school, it also brings more water to the village. The balance of GUI0904 funding shall be used to purchase materials and pay for the skill labor charges. The villagers will devote their labor for non-skill tasks like digging tunnels and burying pipes.

Project map：

Description:

A: “水源”: new water spring which water to be channeled to school.

B: “旧水池”: existing village reservoir which does not hold enough supply.

C: “水池”: new reservoir proposed in the school.

Proposal

1. Build two reservoirs, one at the new water spring and the other in the school.

2. Channel water to the existing village reservoir with 1400 meters plastic pipes. All pipes are to be buried in the ground. Channel water from the village reservoir to the new school reservoir.

3. Build a hand washing pool in the school and channel water to school’s kitchen.

Budget

Total Budget is RMB 5,717yuan. RMB 4,217yuan is from CTEF donation. The remaining expense is to be supported through local donation.

Related picture

Figure1. Village cadre and village elder climbed the mountain to find suitable water resource.

Figure2. Water resource

Figure3. White-haired Village elder searched for water resource.

Volunteers from Our Chinese partner WARM 1+1  visited some schools sponsored by CTEF during the National Day's holiday week.  They reported to us the progress on one of our elementary school projects—Gaoyu Elementary in Song Jiang, GuiZhou.   Here is a slide show with the progress made by the volunteers.