Letter 29 - Jan 2005

Dear All,
Let me first repeat my good wishes for the New Year 2005, and wish you well for the Chinese Year of the Rooster, which begins on 9 February !
The end of last year was overshadowed by the catastrophe of the Tsunami which affected various countries in South-East Asia. The solidarity in response to this disaster has been remarkable, even though much of the emotion it brought out was due to the fact that there were Westerners among the victims. We, too, were acutely aware of this drama which affected neighbouring countries of China, and we felt that we could not remain inactive at such a time. We took a decision which is controversial and merits being discussed.
After consulting with our president Michelle Fitoussi and with members of the office, we decided to contribute something to the general effort of solidarity by making a donation in the name of the Children of Ningxia, for a specific cause that is close to our own : namely, to an emergency programme of the french-based association Help and Action (Aide et Action), to benefit the reconstruction of schools for the children of devastated villages in India and Sri Lanka. We know this NGO, whose approach is no different from ours and whom we can trust. It seemed legitimate to us not to remain confined to our own project as though this project were not connected to the time and circumstances in which it is being carried out.
I hasten to clarify that our contribution - 2000 Euros - does not come from the individual contributions made by the public. These, as I pointed out in my last newsletter, are exclusively dedicated to the granting of bursaries to the disadvantaged children of Ningxia. This sum is taken from the royalties accruing from the two books, Ma Yan’s Diary and Ma Yan et ses soeurs which are normally used for special initiatives, as for instance for the computer rooms we set up at Yuwang.
But some may still wish to criticise our decision. Diane Michaud, one of our representatives in Hong Kong, has let me know that she felt this was a debatable decision since the funds of the association are clearly devoted to a very specific purpose. She felt that there was a certain risk of shaking the trust of our supporters in us if we put the money to a different use, albeit for a good cause. This discussion brings another debate to mind, which was set off in France by Médecins sans frontières (MSF) asking the public to stop making donations specifically dedicated to Tsunami victims, since they already had enough to finance their activities in this context, and felt that it would be ethically wrong to use sums collected as a result of strong emotional support for the victims of that catastrophe, for other purposes.
This is an interesting debate and I would like to have your views on it. It is understood, of course, that this gesture of ours is a complete exception and has no prospect of being repeated, that the sum we made available in this way was used for a real humanitarian emergency occurring in our geographical region and, finally, that the money we used did not directly come from donations made by the public. But this is an ongoing debate. I take full responsibility for the decision that was taken but recognise that one could disagree. I do not think that by acting the way we did, in the middle of a humanitarian crisis of considerable magnitude, we can have breached the contract of confidence which unites us.
Ningxia (1). Two pieces of news from Ningxia. Firstly some medical news. The Association has not until now taken any initiatives in the medical field since this appeared to be beyond its objectives as well as its abilities. But in two cases we have now thought it right to provide some logistical help to two initiatives taken individually by members of our group.
Helene, a friend from Paris who went to Ningxia last year has decided on her part to collect money to pay for the operation of a child from Zhang Jia shu, the village where Ma Yan was born. This child was born with a deformation of the feet which prevented him from walking normally. The operation has been carried out successfully in mid-January in Yinchuan, with Ma Yan’s mother undertaking to accompany the child and his mother from the village to the provincial capital. The chief surgeon of the hospital himself conducted the operation, after learning how it had been paid for, and he called the entire staff of the hospital together to tell them about Helene’s action. A verdict on whether this child will fully regain his ability to walk will be made in two months’ time.
A group of students in the UK has collected some funds, as yet not sufficient, to allow the mother of Ma Xiaomei, one of our bursary recipients and one of the protagonists in the book Ma Yan et ses soeurs, to have a tumour operated on. Last autumn, when she went to hospital, she was fist asked to make a deposit payment in the amount of 4000 Yuan RMB (about 300 Euros) before they would proceed to do anything. She didn’t have as much as ten Yuan with her. The operation will cost 19000 Yuan RMB (about 1,500 Euros) and will take place in a few days. The mother was waiting for Xiaomei to come home from school for the New Year Festival so that she would be able to take care of her two younger brothers, and of the small grocery shop they are running to make a living.
The Chinese government thinks that half of China’s 800 million peasants do not get the medical treatment they need because they cannot afford it, and a third of those who begin treatment break off prematurely for the same reason. These gestures made by members of the Association are only two drops in the ocean of a campaign for improving healthcare in China ; but if the child in Zhang Jia Shu can walk again, and if Ma Xiaomei’s mother, who is already widowed by the death of her husband from cancer, survives this tumour and can continue looking after her still young children, then these two drops will entirely make sense.
Ningxia (2). Some disappointing news. The well which was dug in Zhang Jia Shu only yields water of much worse quality than expected, which proves unusable even for irrigation purposes. When I went to the village in December, I could confirm this for myself and I could see how disappointed the villagers were. This matter caused some stir in the village, since one of its public figures had exercised manipulative influence on where the well was going to be dug. This person is now being reproached by everybody. Without going into details, this result, while regrettable, should not discourage us. For one thing, we still have enough money left from the specific donation we received for this purpose, to make a second attempt in the place which had originally been envisaged for the digging, namely the place where the old well, which dried up several years ago, used to be. For another thing, this mini-crisis allows us to clarify the way roles are distributed in the village, which like all villages is divided into rivaling clans. It is difficult to say more about this matter at the present stage. But we will try to ensure that from this relative failure a sounder relationship is born with our local contact persons. I will keep you posted on any further developments in this matter.
Still on the problem of water...subsequently to the discussion which took place during our general assembly in Paris, our friends Jean-François and Pascale met with a French NGO which runs a highly successful project in Burkina-Faso, a region just as arid as Ningxia. Their techniques for conserving the little water available do wonders there. Let us see how this experience might benefit our friends in Ningxia. In this matter, too, we will follow up on new developments.
Regard

Pierre Haski

 

 

 

 

 

Letter 27 - October 04

Dear All
Our Association has had some historical moments...
Computers. On Monday, 25 October, we inaugurated the multimedia room for which we had provided funding to Yuwang High School, Ma Yan’s old school. Fifty brand-new computers have been installed and connected as a network. On them we could see the students, children of those who are among the poorest in all of China, make their first typing attempts on the keyboards, with the help of software specially designed for beginners.
This inauguration also gave occasion to an official open air ceremony in the in the courtyard of the school, in front of the new school building, and before hundreds of students who had assembled there despite an icy wind. A number of political authorities and authorities representing the edcuational sector had made the journey, thus giving us the greatest offical recognition since the beginning of our initiative in Ningxia, three years ago. The speeches were of an exceptional emotional warmth : the actual realisation of this project which has been our most large-scale project so far, was greatly appreciated and has increased our standing in the eyes of our partners in the region. These computers were paid for thanks to a special sales action by the french company Hermès.
We were also able to distribute their first school uniforms to the students - blue and white overalls bearing the name of the college - paid for by the Association for around 1000 students, at the suggestion of the school director. For him it was a question of dignity, allowing his high school to resemble the schools in China’s greater cities.
The well. The following day we went to Zhang Jia Shu, Ma Yan’s native village from which our initiative took off, and there we could see that work on the well was progressing well. This work, too, is one of the Association’s larger projects, and it has been paid for by Procter & Gamble France. The well was nearly done when we got there, and we could see the water glitter at the bottom of the shaft, about 100 metres deep. The workers were just preparing to put drains in place, and a few days after our visit the villagers should be able to draw water from this well - water very precious in this semi-arid region.
This well does not sort out all the problems the village has with satisfying its basic needs : for water from this well is briny and unpleasant and not suitable for human consumption. It will be used for agricultural needs and for livestock, which is already a considerable improvement to the situation before, as it savs the people a walk of more than an hour to what used to be the nearest well. The company in charge of digging the well thought that there was enough water to meet the needs of the population ten kilometres round in this basin
The villagers, who were taking turns to check up on the progress of the construction work, all expressed their lively satisfaction with the realisation of this dream : this had been the first matter people talked to me about when I first came to the village in May 2001...The old well had dried up several years previously, and there was absolutely no money for reconstructing it.
During this trip we also visited two establishments whom we are helping. Firstly the primary school of Ma Gao Zhuang, situated at 10 kilomteres from Yuwang, where we now have a total of 21 bursary recipients, and where thanks to a donation made by a French company in Shanghai, the purchase of teaching material. At this school too we were asked to donate computers : with the successful example of Yuwang, the idea has caught on like fire...The school’s director, with whom we have a very cordial relationship, made a fervent plea for such a measure, which would allow the poor children at his school a chance to escape from the margins of China’s ongoing process of modernisation.
We also paid a visit to the primary school of Zhang Jia Shu, where we are ensuring free education to all school-age children. There, too, we were given a splendid reception and were honoured by rows of students lined up to greet us, and with official speeches. In this school, we have some difficulties with assuring complete financial transparency, which may partly be due to a rapid change in directors : three in one year...We insisted on the necessity of guaranteeing transparency of all accounts, which is not a small matter in a context of such great misery as this. We met with further requests to give funding for improving the school’s equipment and for construction work that would improve study conditions. We made a commitment to help on the condition, again, that the accounts be entirely transparent.
This trip has given us an opportunity to survey the route so far taken by the Association, in the service of improving the conditions of education and life in this region which has become important to us. The near completion of these two big projects, the computers and the well , have been great new achievements, and this gives us great encouragement to continue on the same route. We have begun a dialogue with various partners in the region, offical as well as unofficial ones, to look for ways of bringing about a more sustainable development, less dependent on a disaster-stricken agriculture. This is not an easy task inasmuch as it cannot build upon any tradition or pre-existing activity, but it seems indispensable to us of this region is overcome its misery and marginalisation.
Ma Yan. On our trip we also paid a visit to Ma Yan and her family. Ma Yan has left the High School at Yuwang for a modern senior high school in the town of Wuzhong, near the provincial capital. She is a boarding student there, and is now benefiting from study conditions clearly superior to those she had at her old school. She is happy to be able to pursue her school education in such conditions. The director of this enormous school (3.600 students !) insisted on our visiting his establishment ; he was delighted with the prestige conferred upon it by the presence of the author of a diary that has gone round the world...Ma Yan’s family has followed her into this town, abandoning their village in order to rent a modest apartment in Wuzhong. Her two brothers also go to school there, while the father is working in the high school....Ma Yan’s mother now owns a mobile phone : she has come a spectactularly long way indeed.
Hong Kong. On this trip I was accompanied by Diane Michaud and Evonne Tsui the two representatives of the hildren of Ningxia in Hong Kong. They came along to see for themselves what the reality was like in Ningxia, and to bear witness to others on their return to Hong Kong. Their company was all the more important because our presence in Hong Kong, this small but particularly prosperous corner of China, is now gradually taking shape. Firstly, through our connection with the Lycée français international (LFI) a group of whose students and teachers travelled to Ningxia last May, and which will embark upon a new adventure on 5 November : two teachers and two parents of students at LFI will, with support from the school direction of the lycée and a solid logistic group, will carry the colours of the Children of Ningxia on the occasion of a famous humanitarian march which takes place each year in the New Territories, the zone [around Hong Kong] directly bordering on mainland China. They will have to walk 100 kilometres in very difficult territory, which will bring in funding for the causes they fight for. Deep thanks and bravo to the volunteers thus combining a sportive challenge with one of active solidarity.
The ‘MacLehose race’ was the occasion for us to publicise the presence of the Association in Hong Hong, around our two ‘pillars’, Diane Michaud et Evonne Tsui. I joined the team doing the walk in mid-October for a photo sesssion and for an encounter with the Chinese language Hong Kong press, which devoted a number of pages to this initiative as well as to Ma Yan’s story and to the work of our Association. Further activities are being envisaged to make our initiative better known on the occasion of the race.
Nîmes. Another active outpost/pole of our initiative is the region of Nîmes, where there is an active group around Pascale Godebska-Minet. On 15 October, the Carré d’Art of Nîmes held a reception for about 150 people in the context of the national French ‘Reading Fesitval [Lire en Fête]’, at the initiative of Diane Donnet who is responsible for the ‘Young People’ sector [of this arts centre]. This reception revolved around Ma Yan’s story. The letter written by Ma Yan to her mother was read out by a Chinese child, and several participants, among them Emmanuelle Polack who is the general secretary of the Association and who had come to Paris fo this purpose, provided background information on Ma Yan and on the plight of the children of Ningxia. Another public gathering earlier on, in a multimedia library, had brought around 45 people together, most of them children. It had been organised together with the Association ‘One thousand Colours [les mille couleurs]’.
So our movement of solidarity born almost three years ago with the publication of Ma Yan’s Diary lives on and is thriving. In October it connnected chidren in the south of France listening to the reading of extracts from the diary, to children in Yuwang making their first contact with computers, an experience of which their status as poor peasants had until then deprived them. The magic continues...Again, many thanks for your support. Can you pass this letter on to friends around you ?
Best regards

Pierre Haski

 

 

 

Letter 26 - September 04

Hello,
The return of September marks the beginning of a new era for the Association of the children of Ningxia, in various senses, for not only has the number of bursaries we have granted risen to around 400 - the precise number has not yet been settled - but also two ’big’ projects of ours have finally begun to be realised, and Ma Yan has moved to a high school in the provincial capital of Ningxia, Yinchuan.
THE NEW SCHOOL YEAR. Those of you who have been with us in this movement of solidarity from the beginning will recall that at the beginning of 2002, we started by helping 20 girls, including Ma Yan, to continue their school education. Two and a half years later, the number has risen to about 400 children of this disadvantaged Chinese region who now receive our support for their education. Our action is primarily affecting three educational establishments in the region : the primary school in the village of Zhang Jia Shu, for which we have been guaranteeing, since December 2003, free access to education for all children of school age, i.e. around 250 children ; the middle school of Yuwang which is attended by a number of children from Zhang Jia Shu receiving our support, and the combined primary and middle school of Ma Gao Zhuang, not very far from Yuwang, to which we have now for the first time allocated 21 bursaries to be granted at the school director’s recommendation. He is an old acquaintance as he used to be the director of Yuwang middle School. We also support some youths who after finishing their three years at Yuwang are now attending senior high school, in most cases in the district capital Tongxin.
These considerable achievements have been made possible by the growing support for the Association for the Children of Ningxia, in France as well as in other countries where The Diary of Ma Yan has been published. All the people who have made donations are cordially thanked here : your generosity translates in to concrete improvements which we are now able to put in in place. A part of the royalties from The Diary of Ma Yan also goes into the coffers of the Association which, let me remind you, undertakes to accompany those whom it ’adopts’ as bursary recipients through to the end of their school education.
MA YAN. A new beginning, too, in the life of Ma Yan, who in September started her life as a Senior High School student on a new footing : she has become a boarding student in an educational establishment in Yinchuan, Ningxia’s provincial capital. So her dream is being further realised.
COMPUTERS. The actual installation of the computers for Yuwang middle School depended on the completion of the new building, which had been considerably delayed. Now, the brand new school building has finally been completed and we have been able to have two new IT rooms equipped with 50 computers, which are connected to a network. The funding for this project had been obtained through a generous donation by the French company Hermès. ’Mission accomplished’ eighteen months after we made our promise to the director of the school, who had pleaded in favour of such an action with the following words. ’If our students leave the High School without ever having used a computer, we will effectively have produced illiterates in this new technological age.’ We will inaugurate the computer cluster rooms, so uncommon in a school in a disadvantaged Chinese region like Ningxia, on the occasion of our next trip out there, which is scheduled for October.
We received an unexpected request from the high school director, after the computers had arrived : he was delighted about the new building and about the two cluster rooms, but regretted the unaltered appearance of the students, dressed so poorly. And he asked us to provide support by donating school uniforms for 1.200 students ! After some deliberation, we agreed to this step, which reminded our friend Emmanuelle Polack of the school of Jules Ferry and its aprons, which concealed social inequalities among its students. Here, the uniforms (in China, it is usually sportswear worn on top of other clothes) will be concealing social misery ! They will be produced locally, which will provide work to the women of Yuwang.
WELLS. Another great piece of news, after a long waiting period, is that work on the well of Zhang Jia Shu is about to commence. We had been prevented from making any progress on this head by the continued absence of a clear local authority in the village over a period of several months, after the village head and party secretary had been dismissed. Finally, as she saw that nothing was happening, Hélène, a member of the association who traveled to Ningxia this summer, extracted a paper authorising us to begin work on the well, duly stamped, from a local functionary at Yuwang ! We then found a local company to carry out the work. Let me remind you that the only well of Zhang Jia Shu had dried up eight years ago, and was never rebuilt. The funding for this project is covered by a ’sustainable development grant’ which we received from the American company Procter and Gamble, after having entered a competition for this grant, together with the publishing house Nathan. Another promise made to the inhabitants of Ma Yan’s native village, which is shortly to be realised.
THANKS. We have received a very warm letter of thanks from Mr Yang Zhenglin, the director of the school at Ma Gao Zhuang, to which we have been providing help in several forms since spring 2004 (i.e., the donation of teaching materials, a donation of about 500 kg of clothes collected by students of the lycée français of Beijing, and an additional 21 bursaries starting September 2004). ’This is my first year at this school,’ he writes, ’and I feel that the children of this school are truly in need of help. And today, the children of this district have received signs of love from far away, from another country ! I thank you and express, in the name of the school, of the teachers as well as the students and their parents, my deepest appreciation of the spirit of internationalism which you have so generously demonstrated. And his letter concludes ’may our friendship last forever’ !
ANNOUNCEMENT. An event focusing on Ningxia and its problems of education will take place 15 October in the Carré d’art of Nîmes, in Southern France, with high school students of this region. This event is being organised by Pascale Gobedska, who represents the Association in the South of France, and who had already organised a panel discussion last February in Nîmes- and by Diane Donnet, who is responsible for the youth department of the Carré d’Art. Several participants have been pencilled in, among them Emmanuelle Polack who is the secretary general of the Association.
Another initiative, this time in Hong Kong, should see a group of demonstrators representing the Children of Ningxia, consisting of professors from the Lyçée Français International of Hong Kong, participating in a 100 km long march with the general purpose of collecting funds for humanitarian causes, at the beginning of November. We will come back to you about this planned event next month.
In China, the Beijing International Society (BIS) asked me to give a presentation on the Diary of Ma Yan and on the work of the Association. This event took place in September, and allowed us to make a number of contacts. The Association has also been invited to join a network which is being established between Chinese and foreign NGOs working in China, and certain companies desirous of becoming involved in social causes. An original and potentially important new initiative, just as the country is assuming an important role in the process of globalisation. I will keep you informed of all further developments regarding this promising initiative.
Yet again, many thanks for your support. Please pass this letter on to others !
Best wishes

Pierre Haski