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.
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
RSS