Spring Bud Girls in College!
Graduation from Senior High School
In 2001, we recruited 1000 girls from 44 villages in Shaanxi Province and started them at 4th grade in 22 primary schools. Those who lived beyond 5 kilometers became boarding students. All the girls continued from 4th grade through 9th grade (end of middle school in China).
Then they had 3 options--to enter the labor market, to attend vocational schools, or to go for key (academic) high school aiming for college. Roughly 500 decided to work to support their families; 200 attended 3-year vocational training (emphasizing on nursing and nursery school teaching); 269 entered key high schools.
In 2010, of the 269 graduating from key high schools, 257 attempted the highly competitive college entrance exams. Of the 138 that passed, 26 are attending colleges outside of Shannxi Province, one as far as Hai-Nan Island. We have students majoring in education, law, medicine, math, science, architecture, engineering, computer science, finance, and foreign languages (English, Spanish, Japanese). All our students have laptop computers, donated by Lenovo.
For our Spring Bud girls in college, this is a tremendous life change. It is the first time that they are living in big cities, where different dialects maybe spoken, where they need to exercise independent thinking and decision-making. For student in college outside of Shaanxi Province, the Institute has arranged for local host families that the students can call on. We are also in the process of establishing a "mentor program" for some of our students. We feel that for those with illiterate parents, a mentor not only can help academcally but can also open the window to the world for these young minds.
Click here to make a donation to the Springbud Program.
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Background. In autumn of 2000 (lunar year of the Golden Dragon), a team of four Chinese American women were invited by All-China Women’s Federation, the world’s largest non-governmental organization working to represent and protect the rights of women and children in China. The team traveled to the villages in Gansu and Shaanxi Provinces, the region considered historically among the poorest and most neglected. The Chinese film “No Child Left Behind” resonated deeply with the four-woman team. During the 2000 inspection tour, they discovered that most girls in rural villages were unable to attend school, or, at best, only through the third grade. When confronted with this horrible reality, the team committed to educate 1,000 out of 280,000 impoverished girls in Shaanxi Province beginning in 2001. Since then, more than 400 sponsors in the U.S., Canada and Hong Kong are steadfast in their support of these Spring Bud girls, providing scholarships for them over a 13-year period—from 4th grade through college. In September 2007, 750 of our 1,000 middle school graduates took the very competitive entrance examination to senior high schools, of which 274 succeeded in entering key (college preparatory) senior high schools. In addition, another 100 students are enrolled in three-year vocational schools to specialize in nursing, medical technology, nursery school teaching, accounting, agriculture, and other disciplines. At all times, major emphasis is placed on performing community service outside of the classroom. |
Spring Bud girls in 2001 as they entered 4th grade
Spring Bud girls in 2005 in middle school
Spring Bud girls in 2007, graduating from middle school
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