A better educational start for rural children
BEIJING: The mountains of Hubei in Central China are gloomy and cold in early winter. Lu Hongfei, 28, arrives at a community service centre in Wangjiaping village after walking with her three-year-old daughter for half an hour.
In a small activity room, eight children and their parents sit together. The youngest is just a toddler. Books and toys are stacked in one corner.
Since 2012, with UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) China assistance, the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF) has been setting up community-based early childhood development (ECD) centres in poor rural areas affected by urban migration in Hubei, Hunan, Hebei, Shanxi, Guizhou and Xinjiang. Wangjiaping Village, in Wufeng County.
UNICEF has supplied it with books, toys, desks, chairs, kiosks with child-care information, and outdoor facilities for children.
Children in Wangjiaping can play in the ECD centre five days a week.
Parents can engage in play with them under the guidance of volunteers. Regular visits by ECD experts also teach parents better ways to raise their children.
Lu Hongfei and her daughter are at the ECD centre for the first time. For seven years, she and her husband have run a store selling electronic products in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. She brought her elder daughter back to their hometown last month and gave birth to her second daughter.
“A one-year early education programme costs hundreds or even thousands in Hangzhou, and we can’t afford it,” Lu says.
“I never thought the toys and picture books here would be the same as those in the city - and free too. Rural children can have the same opportunity as children in the cities.”
Wufeng County, in the Wuling Mountain area, is one of the country’s contiguous poor areas with an annual per-capita income of less than 8,000 yuan (RM4,700)).
About 85% of the county’s 200,000 people are from the Tujia ethnic minority. And free education comes as a big relief to many of them.