SPREADING THE LIGHT
A unique charity event called ‘Loving Lamp’ helps students in areas without power. Li Yingxue reports.
Ashuo Erri was afflicted with myopia while in high school as he used to study in poor light. And he remembers that one of his classmates got burned because he forgot to blow out a candle after finishing his homework one night.
“I did not have money to buy candles,” says Ashuo. “And many of my classmates developed myopia because they studied under street lamps.”
Ashuo later obtained a master’s degree in education at Sichuan Normal University in Chengdu, Sichuan province, and returned to the Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture to teach.
When he was back, Ashuo was posted to some of the poorest areas which also did not have electricity.
In 2015, when Ashuo learned about a charity event called “Loving Lamp” helping students in areas without power, he signed up as a volunteer and distributed 2,000 Loving Lamps to villages in Liangshan.
The “Loving Lamp” is a solar LED lamp. And over the past three years, over 18,500 lamps have been distributed to children in Daliangshan in Sichuan, Yongshan and Wenshan in Yunnan province and Kashgar, Tumxuk, Taxkorgan Tajik and Yecheng in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
Zhang Quanquan, the leader of the design team behind the lamps began to work on the device in 2014.
Speaking about his work, Zhang says: “A charity product is not like doing one that is for commercial use. There are many situations that we need to think about when children are using the lamp.”
So, at first, Zhang’s team wanted to use wooden sticks to hold the lamp, but this was later changed.
The lamp, which is designed to be waterproof, can be easily assembled. Zhang and his team are continuously updating the device to be more practical, and distributing them to the most needy areas through a network of volunteers.
Speaking about the response to the lamps, Zhang says: “We don’t want the students to write letters of thanks to us, but we still receive many. And each one is touching.
“There was one letter that said: ‘I’ll study hard and help more people like me when I grow up’, which made our team feel that what we do is worthwhile.”
This year, Parkview Green Beijing and the China Next Generation Education Foundation initiated the “Green Future, Green Love Charity Activity” on May 31 with the aim of raising enough money to provide 10,000 lamps to students in Rangtang county, in the west of Sichuan.
More than 8,000 students are studying at 53 elementary schools in the county. They typically face power outages for nearly 70 days a year. Some of the outages can last for up to half a year.
Oliver Lai, the general manager of Parkview Green Fangcaodi, says Parkview Green is always donating to charity, but it realizes that one entity cannot do everything, and that the whole of society has to get involved.
“So, we hope, more people can join us to help the young generation, and give them a better environment to grow up in,” says Lai.
“Rangtang is about 550 km from Chengdu. There is a lot of sunshine, but the children there also need more light,” says Lai.