To support one out-of-school child is
To decrease one illiterate person in China;
To support one out-of-school child is
To create one more glimmer of hope for China!
OVER TWENTY YEARS ago when the China Youth Development Foundation was founded, it only had 100,000 yuan as the registered capital and 10,000 yuan as operating costs. But at that time, the number of out-of-school children in impoverished regions had reached millions.
Those young people of the China Youth Development Foundation were creating hope and a miracle as well!
6.Project Hope Choosing Xu Yongguang
On March 7, 2007, on the fifth session of the 10th Commission of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, there was a
scene as follows:
At three o'clock in the afternoon, General Secretary, Hu Jintao visited the committee members of the Communist Youth League, the China Youth Federation, Trade Union and the Women's Federation and had a discussion with them.
All the nine committee members gave concise and concrete speeches and so half an hour was left for free speech. Facing this rare opportunity when one could directly communicate with the General Secretary, everyone was so excited. Those committee members all put up their hands, clamoring to take the floor.
One committee member, Wang Zheng got the chance first. His topic was that "China's economic development needs the support of enterprises and the governments, so the enthusiasm of local governments cannot be dampened." As soon as he finished his speech, many committee members raised their hands. The anchor passed the microphone to Ye Wenling. She said, "The education on Taiwan Island is changing into the education about the independence of Taiwan which should raise our vigilance. And we should strengthen the education about Taiwan history in primary schools, middle schools and colleges, which will help the next generation to set up the right historical outlook and help continue to promote the peaceful development and the unification of the country."
Sitting in the back row, Xu Yongguang stood up twice but failed to get the microphone. He was a little worried. Ye Wenling had just finished and he rushed to the first rows and "robbed" the microphone directly. The other committee members proposed warm applause to him for his act.
Xu Yongguang seemed quite excited. He said, "Time is limited. Just give me three minutes. The voice of the NGOs is very weak and the government should give some trust to these NGOs and grass-root organizations." Xu Yongguang took "Friends of Nature" founded by Liang Congjie as an example. This environmental protection organization has been established for thirteen years and has been awarded fifteen kinds of national or international prizes. Nowadays because the related government organs, who were the supervisors of this organization, were reluctant to deal with its business, this organization lost the legitimate identity approved by the government and didn't have the right to make invoices which terribly blocked it from accepting donation fund. Xu Yongguang described the situation in which civil organizations were with the following sentence — "protecting the backward and weeding out the elite" which meant many non-profit organizations established by the government were wasting social and public resources while many excellent grass-root organizations could only keep operation illegally, struggling hard in the seam. On the one hand, the related government departments do not believe in civil organizations and see them as trouble. He said frankly, suppressing the development of civil organizations was suppressing the public's initiatives for public welfare cause. This is harmful for the harmony of a society. The government undertook the whole social affairs meanwhile it also had to handle all the trouble. He thought, as a good social organization, it may be summarized in the following characters: the rule of law, the supervision of government, good operation of the organization, self-discipline of the industry, the supervision of society, the choice of the public, fair competition and survival of the fittest.
This episode of Xu Yongguang, "robbing" the microphone became the sidelight of this Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
This is Xu Yongguang. Among all of my friends he definitely possesses the most distinctive individual style.
Xu Yongguang is 1.68 meters high, a little fat and seems stocky. He is always dressed in suits and leather shoes. His suit is wellironed, his tie is tied to admiration and his shoes are always well polished. Once he said to me in pride, "At the beginning of 1980s when the reform and opening up just started, I began to wear western clothes and a tie when going to work. Maybe I was the first one to wear western suit in the Communist Youth League Central Committee." The dress is a reflection of the times. It did cost some courage to wear western suits in the Party and government institutions at the beginning of 1980s. In order to demonstrate his words, he showed me a yellow picture in which he was in western suits, standing in front of the building of the Communist Youth League Central Committee. I made a comment, "Do you think in this dress you looked like a salesman of a township enterprise early in the reform and opening up?" Xu said, "You should think about the price of this suit. It only cost me forty yuan." Probably, he is the first male in the Communist Youth League Central Committee to use a hairdryer. Every time on a business trip with him, the first thing he does in the washroom every morning is to carefully serve his naturally wavy black hair with his hairdryer. He once said, "I can forget to take anything with me on a business trip except for my hairdryer. It matters a great deal to one's image. How can we take it lightly?"