Aug/Sept 2002

30th September 2002

Education - Continuing and Expanding School Fees Support

Education fees remain relatively high in Hanyuan County, thus continuing to be a strain for villagers to pay their children's school fees each semester. DORS has been supporting school fees, full or partial, since 1997 in Hanyuan County and since Sept 2001 in Ganluo County. This semester, DORS is continuing its support towards education in both counties by supporting 307students (173 girls/134 boys) in 14 villagers. A total of RMB 39,132 (GBP3402) was expended.

The students we support are from villages where we currently have on-going poverty alleviation projects. With other long-term sustainable projects being carried out in those villages, we hope that in the future, the villagers would be able to support their children's education.

To decide which students to support, we carried out meetings with the villagers in each hamlet, discussing DORS education project and explaining why we give priority to the female students and Yi minority. Household interviews were conducted based on a list of the poorest households in the hamlet chosen by the villagers themselves. During the meeting and subsequent household visits the final list was agreed on.

We would like to thank the following organisations and individuals for their support to our education project: Kadoorie Foundation, EPWS, Carma Elliot and Marion Lang.

Dawan Village School Reconstruction

One of the projects recently started in Dawan village is the reconstruction of the old school in Hamlet 5; Children from this hamlet have to walk 2 hours on dangerous mountain roads to attend school near Hamlet 1. When the reconstruction is done, the school will be able to accommodate children from Hamlets 5 and 6.

Unfortunately, with the rainy season, one of the trucks transporting materials for that school's reconstruction was washed away in a flash flood whilst trying to cross a river. Luckily no one was hurt. The school reconstruction has been delayed until the end of the rainy season.

During the flash flood, the road was also washed away thus affecting DORS plans for starting other components there.

Forestry - New Project Site Selected

After assessing four villages, DORS decided to carry out a new Community Forestry Project in Xiangshu Village. A baseline survey was conducted in the village for three days. 10% of the total households were interviewed and meetings were held in each hamlet with the villagers to give them an opportunity to express their opinion about their forestry needs. In order to have a better understanding about the village, participatory methods were used when the village resources map was drawn both during the meetings and when the household interviews were carried out.

Discussions about which types of trees to plant and planning the planting seasons were also held. The villagers chose to plant walnuts this autumn and Sichuan pepper in spring 2003. Preparation work for this planting season has started: the building of irrigation water tanks for each household is underway and land is being prepared for the walnut saplings. A forestry training session in walnut management was also carried out.

We would like to thank Misereor for their support for this Community Forestry Project.

Zhongpu Village Community Water Supply Completed

Following the completion of their new community water supply system, all 327 residents (75 households) of Zhongpu Village, in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture's Ganluo County now have clean, mountain spring water piped to their homes. All labour was provided by the villagers themselves, and technical co-operation was provided by engineers from the Ganluo and Hanyuan County Water Conservancy Bureaus.

A total of 34,955 RMB (3,040 GBP) was spent on this project towards the purchase of transport and materials, or, just over 9 pounds for each person now benefiting from having piped water. Special thanks to the Kadoorie Charitable Foundations for their support of this project as one component of DORS' Integrated Community Development Programme.

DORS News and Information

Warren Priest has now completed his research on edible fungus in Sichuan and left the Hanyuan area. DORS would like to thank Warren and the Sino-British Fellowship Trust for the contribution that this research has made to our work in rural development.

Zeng Hui Xian (Carrie) and Lu Chao Qun (Andrew), from Hong Kong spent one month at DORS in Hanyuan helping out with our projects. This married couple has been working in development for four years with World Vision and is currently spending one and half years visiting different development organisations in Asian countries to further expand their knowledge of development by working on projects. We would like to thank both of them for their help during their stay at DORS.

We are once again looking for a new volunteer to join the DORS team. The post of Volunteer Project Assistant is for 18 months beginning at the end of October 2002. Ideally the candidate will have a degree or background in Development Studies and/or relevant social sciences, with fluency in Mandarin. For more information, please see our webpage at www.dors.org.uk. Any interested applicants should send a cover letter and CV to info@dors.org.uk.