Chinese children given the gift of education

His newly-awarded doctorate was not yet twelve hours old when
Wenyuan Shi embarked on a project which has since changed the lives
of hundreds of children in rural China.

The idea, Shi said, was simple. With a doctorate in genetics
from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in hand, he was young, he
felt lucky for the education he had just completed, and he wanted
to help children struggling in China, where he had been born and
raised.

That desire took the form of the Overseas China Education
Foundation, a non-profit organization Shi founded in 1992 before
becoming a professor of dentistry and oral biology at UCLA.

Since its inception, the foundation has exploded into an
organization with 1,500 members from Los Angeles to Europe, all
dedicated to helping children in China’s poorest rural areas
attain a basic education by sponsoring their schooling expenses. In
2004, the foundation was sponsoring over 1,200 children.

A branch of the foundation was recently started by a group of
UCLA graduate students, who plan to display paintings, calligraphy,
and other artwork by OCEF children in the Kerckhoff art gallery
Thursday and Friday.

The education foundation has allowed students to give back to
their home communities, said Weizhi Rong, a graduate student
studying chemical and biomolecular engineering.

“Especially after coming to the U.S., we feel more and
more responsible to contribute something back to our
hometown,” Rong said, noting that many communities in rural
China have schools without buildings, with children writing in the
dirt with sticks from a nearby tree.

Instead of waiting until he acquired wealth to start fulfilling
that responsibility, Rong decided to join OCEF, where he says his
donation of fifty dollars a year allows a child who cannot
otherwise afford to pay the tuition and buy books to have the
opportunity to attend school.

“In rural China, if you have an education that’s the
only way you can get out of that poor area and find some better
jobs. Otherwise you will end up at home working as a poor
laborer,” Rong said.

Knowing that they have helped allow students to achieve their
potential by going to school is what appeals to other members.

“I guess the Chinese culture kind of made me feel that if
there are underprivileged children in China who cannot go to
school, I kind of have a responsibility to give some money to
them,” said Mei Yang, a graduate student in psychology.

Holding up a stack of letters from children who have learned to
write in part due to the efforts of OCEF, Yang remarked on the
beauty of one child’s handwriting.

“If she didn’t go to school, she wouldn’t even
know that she could write this beautifully,” Yang said.
“They never know what they missed.”

Children granted scholarships by OCEF are subject to a rigorous
verification process to make sure that they are honestly in need of
the funding, said Lin He, an OCEF member and mathematics graduate
student.

He’s mother, Mao Xiang Dai, is a retired elementary school
teacher and OCEF coordinator in her rural hometown of Chen Jia
Fang. Money from OCEF is sent to trusted coordinators such as Dai,
who can personally verify the need of students requesting funds, He
said.

Inspectors are routinely sent to isolated villages in order to
ensure that the coordinators are correctly doing their jobs and not
favoring relatives, He said.

“We didn’t really have much confidence in (the
government’s) system,” Shi said of the original
decision to give the money directly to the schools through
coordinators.

Those involved say the OCEF policies of using none of the
donation money for operational expenses and directly disbursing
funds to the particular school of the student in need are the
factors which set it apart from other aid organizations.

“We know how important every penny is, how it is difficult
to get for them, and we want to put it to the right use,” Shi
said.

While Shi was the first president of the foundation, his
involvement has dropped off in recent years as his professional
career has taken off. So he was pleasantly surprised when a group
of graduate students at UCLA approached him last year with the
desire to re-implement OCEF in Los Angeles, Shi said.

“To see them going through the same passage, it’s a
very rewarding experience,” Shi said.