Our annual charity auction continues this month

TRAVELLER ASIA-PACIFIC has been proud to work alongside the Chi Heng Foundation (CHF) in bringing together our many partners in the hotel and airline industries to make a real difference to the lives of thousands of young people in China. As we enter our 13th year of association with CHF we remain truly humbled by the efforts of the foundation’s staff and volunteers, whose work deserves our utmost admiration and respect.

CHF’s long-running commitment to providing educational sponsorship and psychosocial support to AIDS-impacted children in China, from primary school through to university, has remained strong over the past 16 years. Despite the challenges involved in bringing aid to a large number of students spread over a vast geographic area, CHF ensures that all funds are distributed directly by its own staff and volunteers rather than intermediaries, ensuring quality and continuity within the programme.

To date, the foundation has cumulatively sponsored more than 23,000 students from AIDS-affected families, and since 2002 more than 2,500 have graduated from universities. CHF is the largest and longest running nongovernmental operation in China providing comprehensive assistance to AIDS-impacted children.

Alongside formal education, CHF also helps to provide children with vocational training as well as running psychosocial programmes, including home visits, art counselling, summer camps, memory book projects and other school-based activities. Experience has shown that these measures provide a positive impact on the students’ academic performance and mental health.

Many of CHF’s efforts have also gone into long-term development projects including building more than 25 reading rooms in China this year, 14 of which were built with the support of Business Traveller and its readers. These reading rooms provide much-needed reading materials as well as serving as a meeting point and location for staff and volunteers to provide extracurricular activities and companionship to children in diverse areas of rural China. Continuous funding of these and other meaningful programmes, along with educational support, is critical in alleviating the suffering of thousands of innocent children, and providing the chance of a bright future for all.

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