Beijingkids magazine visits our Football for Life program (in collaboration with ClubFootball).  Click here for complete article.

 (Excerpt from The Economist.)

In a cold classroom

In urban and rural China alike, the first nine years of schooling are supposed to be free. But not for rural migrants. In Beijing, as in other big cities, hundreds of privately run schools have sprung up in recent years to cater for them. At the Xiangyang Hope School in Huangcun township on the southern edge of the capital, the basic fee is 1,100 yuan ($165) a year: a snip for many urban residents, but the equivalent of several weeks’ wages for many migrants. There is an extra charge for heating; children complain that they are cold in the bitter winters. One parent says she is preparing to take her child back to her village, because conditions are better there.

The authorities have tried to muzzle the principal, Luo Chao (a migrant himself). Mr Luo was until recently the headmaster of another school to the north-east of Beijing. He says local officials told him just before the lunar new year holiday in February that the school would be demolished to make way for a private development project, and could not reopen after the break. Officials briefly detained Mr Luo and the head teacher of another condemned migrants’ school to prevent them petitioning higher authorities. Officials promised that the children would be found new places, but Mr Luo says there is no way that the local government-run school would have enough room for them.

In education, the hukou system’s absurdity is particularly glaring. Migrant children, though classified as “agricultural”, usually have no more than one brief exposure to rural life every year when they are taken to their parents’ home towns for the lunar new year festivities. School places in urban areas are so scarce that some pupils will drop out and others, though old enough for secondary school, will have to stay in primary classes. Tens of millions of children of migrant workers are, in effect, forced to stay in the countryside for schooling, looked after by other relatives. If they do move to urban areas with their parents, they may not sit exams for senior high school in the city where they live. They must return to their place of registration.

For the full story, click here.

For the third year in a row, between March 26th and March 28th 2010, the Expat Show was successfully staged in Beijing. It was, as usual, an extraordinary event with over 100 exhibitors and almost 7000 visitors. Thousands of visitors, mostly expats living in Beijing, came to the show and browsed the exhibits to find out about services and products that they might need for their everyday life in Beijing.

We at CAI were also present, occupying a well placed corner-booth on one of the many promenades within the China World Trade Center location. During our time at the exhibition, we spoke to many visitors who were keen to find out more about what CAI does, and how they could help out. We were delighted with the amount of interest that was shown in our cause and we made useful contacts with several individuals who are interested in helping out in one way or another. This being the first such exhibition I have attended, it was a fascinating experience for me personally and I enjoyed myself a great deal, speaking with people from around the world and telling them about our programs and campaigns.

Our aim in participating in this year’s exhibition was to raise awareness of CAI and our mission here in China. We feel that given the positive response we received, we achieved this goal, which will help us greatly in our fund-raising and volunteer program activities. The Expat Show was a great platform for expats living in Beijing to gather and find out more about the city in which they live, and though many people attended to find out what they could do to make their own lives easier, I was very happy to see how many people were also willing to “give something back” through their interest and support of organizations like our own.