Projects Summary (1996-2007)
Starting in 1996 DORS has chosen the most disadvantaged villages in Sichuan’s Hanyuan County (and later also Ganluo County) to do poverty alleviation projects. Through implementing small-scale village-level projects, we choose a development direction together with the villagers. The projects DORS has done include roads, paths, electricity, running water, bridges, and other basic infrastructure projects; fuel-efficient stoves, solar energy, biogas systems, and other rural energy projects; women’s microcredit loans projects and household micro-loans; forestry technical training and participatory methods training, along with other capaticty-building trainings; education fees support and school repair, rebuilding and/or facilities/supplies provision; agriculture development; forestry; animal husbandry; and other projects, in sum, 9 major categories of projects (see links on left for examples). Up to the end of 2007, DORS implemented projects in a total of 16 townships, 37 particularly poor villages, and used participatory methods to implement about 440 projects, with a total of 45,080 instances of villagers benefiting (one instance per project). Total funds spent amounted to over 8,000,000 yuan (over 1 million USD or 570,000 GBP). We received the financial support of 13 foundations inside and outside of China, 70 individuals from outside of China and 49 from China.
DORS implements a range of project components. Since 2001 we have focused on integrated projects at village level, which combine numerous component projects as specifically needed in a particular village.
To learn more about DORS approach to community development and participation please see Project Approach.