Helping girls get education, helping the next generation

In its latest press release, the China Children and Teenagers' Fund said it has funded 1.76 million girls' education and provided one-to-one companionship or personalized psychological counseling to 133,400 girls via their "Spring Bud" project.

This means an opportunity to pursue a meaningful life has been ensured for each of 1.76 million girls Having got the support to be back to school, each of the girls now has the opportunity to open more doors, instead of facing limited choices in their life.

That's why the project, which was launched in 1989, is called "Spring Bud". The girls, like spring buds, will grow into beautiful flowers with enough sunshine, water, and nutrition; The support to them might not be a big sum to the donors, but it is like sunshine and water to the recipients.

For the nation, helping the girls to receive more education is a move that benefits all because it improves the education quality of the whole population. Especially, when the girls grow up, marry and have their own children, the education they receive today will prompt them to lay more emphasis on education of the next generation and pass the spirit on.

Back in the 1950s, the newly founded People's Republic of China spent three years helping people nationwide get rid of illiteracy, lowering its illiteracy rate from 80 to 52 percent. A key to its success lies in encouraging female members of the families to participate, which in turn enabled the whole family to obtain knowledge.

Now as illiteracy has almost been eliminated in the nation, the job is to raise the education level for all, in which process the girls today, who will become mothers and key members of society in the future, have a greater role to play.

The Spring Bud Project has made its contribution. In the past 10 years, with the Communist Party of China leadership paying more attention to girls' education, it has grown into a mature program using modern technologies such as social networks. On micro blog, China's equivalent to Twitter, the hashtag #Spring Bud Project# already has a reading count of 1.27 billion, which showcases its current influence and potentials in the coming future.