Sat, Mar 12, 2005 page5

• Foundation gives Chinese workers skills and pride

  RESTORING DIGNITY The Asia Foundation's program gives education and skills training to workers who are often exploited and underpaid

  • AFP
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  Fresh from the province, Hu Yanping was overjoyed when she beat thousands of others for a mere factory job in southern China. Today, several years later, the 20-year-old is on cloud nine as she is chosen from a mountain of applications for a ground-breaking US scholarship program.

  Launched this week, the program run by the Asia Foundation, a San Francisco based non-governmental group, helps provide education and skills training to women migrant laborers in the industrialized belt of southern China.

  About 60 percent of the 10 million migrant factory workers in the belt are women, many under the age of 25, poorly educated, and working for roughly US$50 a month.

  Handicapped by illiteracy and poverty, they are vulnerable to human rights abuses, such as domestic and workplace violence, non-payment of wages, and discrimination.

  "I feel more proud of myself," said Hu, from Shanxi province in northern China, in her scholarship application to the Asia Foundation translated from Chinese. "I will have the freedom to choose a better-paying job in the future, which in turn enhances my capability to help others who are in need," said the worker from an electronics company in Guangzhou.

  Among 36 picked from a pool of 300 shortlisted applicants, she will study management in the Guangzhou University.

  Scholarship winners can choose from a range of subjects, such as accounting, English as a second language, tailoring, small business management, computer science, law, nursing, and art design. The courses are offered in schools and universities throughout China.

  To ensure that coursework reflects future employment needs and opportunities, the Asia Foundation assembled a scholarship panel to review curricula at various universities and vocational schools, officials said.

  "Nowhere in China is there a more dire need for women to have access to education and vocational training than in [southern] Guangdong [province]," said Zhang Ye, China country director for The Asia Foundation.

  "Unfortunately, migrant women workers in this southern China region are often overlooked and ineligible for the same benefits given to residents," she said, according to a foundation statement. "This program will prepare them for jobs in a number of fields, from tourism to small business management."

  The Asia Foundation supports programs in Asia that help improve governance and law, economic reform and development, women's empowerment, and international relations, officials said. It has a network of 17 offices throughout the region.

  Last year, the foundation provided more than US$72 million in program support and distributed almost 800,000 books and educational materials valued at US$28 million throughout Asia.

  Its focus on migrant women workers in China began five years ago. It has provided services for more than 200,000 workers in more than 200 factories in 22 cities and districts along China's Pearl River Delta.

  "The Asia Foundations work to provide migrant workers with access to education and counseling, legal services, and health and safety training, was the first of its kind," said Douglas Bereuter, the foundation's president.

  It first designed and initiated these programs with funding from American jeans giant Levi Strauss.
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