Building Scholarships for Girls in China by Menghan Li

by tuftsigl
Aug 10

This summer I visited three counties from the Southwest part of Guizhou province, one of the poorest regions in China. My project is to find scholarships for the rural girls in these communities to complete their secondary education, as a means to boosting long-term development of the local community.

I selected 100 girls from 12 schools who are outstanding in academic performance, who come from a family in need, and who demonstrate humility, a sense of social responsibility and the determination to break the cycle of poverty. I then created online profiles for each of them and put them on the fundraising platform on Wechat--the biggest social media platform in China, obtaining support from China Charity Aid for Children foundation.

In the meantime, we are working with Harvard Seed Camp to create an add-on, class curriculum for our partnership schools and our member girls, which will include online classes in Spoken English, Women’s Leadership, local and national culture, and sex protection.

Our IT team is constructing an online matching system, which will allow individual donors to log in and match themselves to one of the girls from the many profiles we have created. So far, we have raised $26,500, which will pay for three years of tuition for 35 girls. We aim to reach our goal by the end of August.