Rural children get access to online English classes
Poor village kids receive one-on-one tutoring, thanks to VIPkid’s donation
For kids in rural areas of China, learning English can sometimes seem to be an impossible dream due to a lack of teachers and resources.
A Beijing-based company is donating its online English courses to primary schools in rural areas, including Yunnan, Gansu and Guizhou provinces, as part of a cooperative program with the Jack Ma Foundation.
VIPkid is an online education platform, which provides children with one-onone online English course and links teachers from North America with Chinese kids aged 4 to 12.
It soon built on its success in China by adding more than 30,000 foreign teachers to its network, enabling it to work with 200,000 paid users.
Through its new program, students in poverty-stricken areas can learn English with native speakers via the platform, which usually lasts 40 to 45 minutes per session. Most of the students lack any proficiency in English, so lessons are focused on basic grammar.
“It is the first time that our students get access to a foreign teacher and such an interesting way of teaching. Even if they are a bit shy at first, they become interested and excited with class going through,” said Chen Pengzhen, president of Changyuan Primary School of Yinhan county, Sichuan province, which is one of the schools benefiting from the program.
As VIPKid uses vivid pictures in the courses, students learn with great enthusiasm and gradually learn to speak a word effortlessly, without even realizing it.
“The development of internet and improvement of technology have made education cross boundaries so that children from rural areas can enjoy high-quality international resources,” said Mi Wenjuan, founder and CEO of VIPkid.
“It is not difficult to donate money or things -- but it matters that we are solving the actual educational problems. What we are doing shows how internet education is changing China and even the world,” Mi said.
As of now, VIPkid has promoted the program to more than 100 schools in rural areas from 21 provinces, with most in western China. Nearly 4,000 primary school students have begun to take online English courses.
By 2019, the startup plans to tap into 10,000 rural schools, giving 5 million students access to their resources.
Mi also noted that charitable programs are one of the three main strategies of the company, which is going to invest 100 million yuan ($15 million) to help children across China learn English.
Last year, the company also participated in a program launched by China Renaissance Group, a financial institution, to donate money to handicapped children in Syria.