Jinjiang, one of the most rapidly growing cities in East China's
Fujian
Province, is facing stern challenges as the gap between the
rich and poor is growing fast.
Huang Changfu, 39, a poor disabled farmer living with his sick
wife and three daughters in a borrowed, cramped room, is among the
poorest in urgent need of help.
Huang now is expected to be able to build his own house with
financial support offered by a local non-governmental charity
organization in Jinjiang.
Like Huang's family, 56 poor families with disabled members
living in Jinjiang, are becoming the first batch of beneficiaries
to each receive relief funds of 30,000 yuan (US$3,600) in a charity
housing project for low-income disabled people. It is being
initiated by the Jinjiang Charity Federation, the nation's first
county-level non-governmental charity organization.
The project, administered in cycles, which is predicted to be
finished at the end of 2007, will help solve housing problems for
poor disabled people in the city, said clerks with the
federation.
Since it was founded in December 2002, Jinjiang Charity
Federation has supplied relief assistance as an important
complement to the public poverty relief measures taken by the local
government, said Jinjiang Mayor Yang Yimin at a news conference on
"Jinjiang Charity Day" held over the weekend.
"For the city's 120,000 above-60-year-old people, 16,000 poor
disabled persons and other people who need relief services, the
government's assistance is far from enough," he said.
By early this month, the federation had collected an endowment
of 110.58 million yuan (US$13.4 million), mainly from local
enterprises. About 23.39 million yuan (US$2.8 million) has been
spent on a number of public welfare projects, such as helping the
destitute and disabled improve their living conditions and in
medical care, assisting poor students to return to school and
building public welfare establishments in the city.
(China Daily December 20, 2004)