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Thanks for visiting our website and learning about our charity that helps impoverished children stay in school.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Qu Ling Zhu's Progress

Some of you might be wondering about Qu Ling Zhu. She is back in school, and I hope to see her when I visit on March 24th. Her teacher, Andy Liang, reports that her face is still swollen. I have been assured that this is normal considering the surgery and treatment that she is receiving. She has been taken to Guilin for a follow up check up, and she is scheduled for another operation in 6 months that will be cosmetic surgery to help her appearance. Right now she is wearing a hat until her hair grows out.

I am looking forward to visiting with several of the Blessing Hands students while I am in Yangshuo on a Sister City's trip to dedicate the 93 wheelchairs that the people of Morehead are giving to handicapped citizens of Yangshuo. The government officials will take us to visit many of the schools where Blessing Hands Children are studying, and I will get to meet the childen in person. I also hope to get lots of pictures to post on this site. While I am in Yangshuo, I will also be arranging for a eyeglass clinic in August that will benefit all the citizens of Yangshuo, especially the school children.

Qinzhou Grant


Blessing Hands is now expanding into another area of China besides Yangshuo. We will now be giving 100 students tuition help in the area of Qinzhou, Guangxi, China. Qinzhou is a port city near Viet Nam and seven hours by bus from Yangshuo. I taught teachers there for four weeks in a summer English camp in 2004. I became fond of my students there and wanted to help their schools and students with tuition help as well as those in Yangshuo. My good friend Anna Liu was in charge of that English camp and is now a visiting scholar in Morehead, KY where I live. She was able to advise me on setting up this expanded outreach and help me present a grant proposal to FFCF. I am looking forward to working with her for the good of the children in her area for many years to come.

Qinzhou is a small city by Chinese standards being about the size Ashland, Kentucky. It has a teacher's college nearby. Qinzhou No. One Middle School is one of the best middle schools in the city. They have 6,500 students in lower and upper middle school. Their school is like a college campus, since most of the students are boarding students who come from the outlying countryside. The students above the age of 15, who need tuition help, number about four in a classroom of 70. You can see how they fit in all those students in the photo above. The picture shows a physics class at Putao Middle School near Qinzhou.

The student's homeroom teachers will select the students who show promise in areas of responsibility, effort, leadership, and scholarship. Around Qinzhou there are 60 higher middle schools like Putao that also have children who cannot afford tuitions. Yearly tuition in US dollars, not including boarding expenses, runs $150 in the city schools and $140 in the country middle schools. These farmers might make $400 a year from their leased land, so they have to borrow money to support their children in the higher grades. For $75 a semester a child's life can be changed.

Blessing Hands proposes to help 100 children in the Qinzhou area during the 2006-07 school year. $8,500 of the FFCF grant is set aside for the fall semester. The grant will also include some extras like school supplies and maybe book bags. Anna Liu hopes to gather local support to provide the children with used clothes and other needs. If you are interested in contributing to the Qinzhou project, your donation can be matched by FFCF, and you will receive a tax deduction. Send donations to Founding Family Charitable Foundation, 1004 Rodney Drive, Nashville, Tennessee, 37205-1018. You can even donate by Paypal at http://foundingfamily.org/. That would be especially easy for people in other nations to use.

Qinzhou Grant

This is Anna Yunna Liu who is going to be in charge of the Qinzhou grant for Blessing Hands.
She is the head of the English Department at her Higher Middle school. She has many teachers under her care and has presented the Blessing Hands proposal to the Education Department's superintendant over her area of China.

The superintendent is very enthusiastic about working with Blessing Hands for tuition support for the children over 15 who do not receive government tuition. Anna helped to write and present the grant application to FFCT and will have their support to fund 100 children from the Qinzhou area schools. This grant will aid students from the countryside and Qinzhou No. One Middle School where Anna works. Anna is currently a visiting scholar at Morehead State University in my hometown. She will return to Qinzhou in June and take up her duties again at her school, while also administering the Blessing Hands grant.