Conference highlights achievements in rural child development

The Seventh International Conference on Poverty Reduction and Child Development took place in Beijing on July 24, hosted by China Development Research Foundation under the supervision of the Development Research Center of the State Council.

Themed as "investing in children for sustainable prosperity", the conference discussed issues pertaining to the sustainable development goals of the United Nations, child development, and the construction of public services and policy systems for children.

The conference was joined by around 300 representatives from governmental entities, academic institutions and NGOs from home and abroad, who shared their experience in supporting child education and development.

Li Xiaoyun, a professor at China Agricultural University, gave a speech via video call and showed to the audience the outlook of the once impoverished Hebian village in Mengla county, Yunnan province. He has been leading a team and working at the village for over six years, during which time the village has successfully shaken off absolute poverty.

"I came to this village to help alleviate poverty. We introduced to the village new industries that significantly increased the income of farmers. But these means of poverty alleviation do not involve the fundamental work that is needed to eradicate the intergenerational transmission of poverty," Li said.

When he first arrived in the village, most of the villagers in their 20s and 30s stopped receiving education after primary school, and because there was no kindergarten nearby, the children went to primary school without even a basic knowledge of Mandarin, causing obstacles to their in-class comprehension, he said.

His team opened up a children's activity center that has been offering preschool education to all children in the village, so that the children can go to the primary school with a solid foundation.

The activity center also offers free nutritional breakfasts to the children, with all the expenses covered by the village's collective income generated from developing agriculture.

Li's project is among the numerous community-based early childhood educational programs that are being carried out throughout China.

China Development Research Foundation has been implementing a series of projects with the goal to promote equitable development and support children's growth, especially the "left-behind" children in rural areas.

With the goal to provide aid "from womb to job", the foundation's social experiments start with prenatal care, and continue through the age range of zero to 15, from ensuring children's nutrition and education, to enhancing vocational education and preparing them for their careers.

The foundation in 2007 piloted its nutrition improvement program in rural boarding schools of Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and Hebei province, providing nutritional lunches in canteens for 2,000 students.

In 2011, the national Nutrition Improvement Plan for Rural Students in Compulsory Education was implemented, and the foundation launched the School Nutrition Improvement Initiative under the commission of the Ministry of Education in 2015, which serves to monitor and examine the plan's effectiveness.

According to statistics provided by the foundation, up to September, the number of students benefiting from the plan exceeded 40 million, and more than 145,000 schools joined in the plan.

Li Bin, secretary-general of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, gave a keynote speech at the conference. She remarked that the government has been prioritizing the development of children and taken effective measures to reduce poverty, enhance welfare and guarantee the rights of children.

China's Vice-Minister of Education Sun Yao also said at the conference that China has built a comprehensive educational aid policy system which covers the entire span from preschool to postgraduate education, which, since 2012, has supported a total of 640 million students with their financial difficulties.

He said China will continue to enhance and guarantee the long-term effectiveness of compulsory education, provide education and care for children in rural areas, and cooperate and exchange knowledge with educational experts around the world to jointly promote children's development.

According to Shahbaz Khan, director of UNESCO's Beijing office, China has a gross enrollment ratio of 85 percent for three-year preschool education, compared to the global pre-primary gross enrollment ratio of 61.5 percent.

Khan said in his speech that as China still strives for higher goals in early childhood education in terms of both access and quality, the world can already learn from its great experience.