In many rural communities, children often face challenges with easy medical access. The Chinese government currently provides free public health insurance for all Chinese citizens, but still, there exists a massive disparity. In big, metropolitan cities like Guangzhou or Shanghai, the healthcare system is robust and covers an array of medical issues and procedures. However, in rural cities like Gansu, insurance often does not cover many procedures, including cleft lip and palate surgeries. Even when medical care is provided, the shortage of well-trained doctors compromises the quality of care available. The rate of infection after surgery in rural areas is far higher, and the medical checkups for kids are less comprehensive. To save costs, many families in rural communities often ignore medical checkups for kids, even when these services are provided.
For this campaign, Lantern Foundation has mainly partnered with the Beijing SmileAngel Children’s Hospital, the first charity hospital in China. We pay for the medical checkups of kids in rural areas, covering the doctors’ travel expenses and the materials used for checkups. For the kids that must travel from a remote location to Beijing for a procedure or surgery, we also fund those costs too, which cover airplane tickets and hotel and transportation fees.
Specifically, Lantern Foundation also works with the hospital in providing cleft lip and palate surgeries, which the hospital specializes in. A cleft lip or palate occurs during a baby’s development in the womb, when an opening develops in the upper lip or mouth. Having a cleft lip or palate creates many challenges, including speaking, eating, and even smiling. This birth condition is very common in rural areas due to the genetics of certain ethnic groups and environmental factors such as smoking, malnutrition, and infection. Every year, the hospital performs many cleft lip and cleft palate surgeries for these kids that often can not afford it. Lantern Foundation pays for the surgeries of a select number of kids with these conditions every three months, each surgery costing around $2000.
Millions of children in rural China face many challenges when it comes to obtaining a strong education. Some of these challenges include lack of funds for school, long and treacherous transportation routes, and the lack of school materials. Although the government does provide education until sixth grade, many students in rural areas drop out of school afterward to provide for their families instead. Attending university poses even more difficulties, as the costs of attending are very high. Many families also do not view education as significant since they believe that they will have to return to their families in rural areas and become agricultural laborers anyway. Since education is not valued as highly and performance has statistically been lower, many schools are run-down, lacking books and materials and well-trained teachers.
Lantern Foundation addresses this educational gap first through providing better school materials for students. With the help of our local volunteers, we have donated backpacks, pencil cases, pens and pencils, notebooks and more to over 78 students in rural communities. Additionally, Lantern Foundation partners with the Shanxi Education Foundation, an organization that helps rural schools in the Shanxi Province, to provide books and textbooks for students, training for teachers, and better establishments for classrooms. We are currently working with them on a Book Donation Project with the goal of increasing the number of books in classroom libraries.
As Rodney Naidoo, a teacher in South Africa, said, “We can only break the poverty cycle through education.” Although those that live in rural communities might not understand the value of education, we must work to ensure that kids in rural China have an equal opportunity to learn and grow.
Kids in rural communities face an array of medical and educational challenges that often go unnoticed. These barriers can be as simple as paying for a school transportation fee, having the right medicine to treat a cold, or meeting the necessary nutritional needs, yet they can create a huge challenge for many kids. Because of how small and specific some of these needs are, many large-scale initiatives often fail to address these hidden difficulties. Furthermore, many familial circumstances create barriers for kids in rural areas too. For example, many families in rural areas have family members with disabilities. In fact, the International Labour Organization found that the disabled population is only 20.7 million in urban regions yet 62.3 million for rural areas in China. Because of circumstances like this, kids in rural communities face added pressures of stepping up to support the family financially. Many organizations, which often have a targeted goal, often cannot do much to support these individuals.
Because of the variety of barriers that kids in rural China experience, Lantern Foundation launched an initiative to address these challenges that often go unnoticed. Our local volunteers connect us with families in rural China, and we provide financial support for a variety of causes, including increasing nutrition, purchasing medication, and buying new clothes. For some families, our donations are necessary to maintain the daily needs of families, such as having enough food or ensuring they have a place to live. We support these families either on a monthly basis or on a one-time basis depending on their needs. These families are located across many different provinces in China. In July 2024, we expanded this initiative into Guangxi by sponsoring an additional five families.
