Voices of the Poor Children: Trade or Trade Places!!
Education Advancement Fund International has led the effort to set up programs in rural minority areas in China to spread the ideas of free market economy by teaching rural kids about basic economics, the American Constitution, entrepreneruship, and the rule of law.
Four schools and one college in the poor minority region, Jishou, Hunan, have set up programs to promote understanding of the rule of law, entrepreneurship, community development, Western culture, and free market enterprises.
We have started two Summer camps in which American University Students and students from the UK and Germany will come to teach English and ideas about rule of law and the free market.
Teachers training Program
The program also has a leadership program that trains teachers the values of the free market, entrepreneurship and the American Constitution. So far, six hundred teachers in Jishou minority rural schools are participating in the program. These efforts were initially started by Prof. Kate Zhou shortly after the Sept. 11 tragedy.
Future Programs
1. Institutionalization of poor people's property rights;
Duncan Roberts from UC Berkeley, who is in Baojing, China and Renny Babiarz at University of Hawaii are initiating a poor property rights program this fall. This follows from Hernando De Soto's ideas that the world poor have no access to capital because their limited property is not institutionalized.
2. Entrepreneurship training for local poor people.
3. Micro finance: use village as the basis for small loan grants for the poor.
4. Send the poor children from Baojing and Jishou to attend a globalization rally, thus presenting a diversified view about trade. Anti-globalization forces protest globalization at many international meetings. These kids would like to make their voices heard in favor of globalization. Please help those kids by sponsoring a kid to travel to attend a globalization rally.
To see the importance of studying Chinese, check out this link.
