She is Laureate for the Prize for Women’s Creativity in Rural Life.
Lijuan XIANG – China
She works for a kindergarten she created for rural children.
There are not many places where rural children have access to kindergartens, especially in Third World countries.
After successfully working in the city kindergarten of Dongyue Township, Xiang Lijuan (30) of Dong Yue Xiang Ping Qiao village (Sichuan Province) decided to return home to open a kindergarten for rural children.
Obstacles were immense. She had the care of an elderly mother and a two year old child. With no classrooms, no teachers, no equipment and no money, all she had was a dream and an unbending, unrenting will. First, she had to negotiate with local schools and government. Then she approached banks and large city kindergartens for support. After endless efforts, she secured a 60’000 yuan loan (US$ 7’500), which enabled her to open her Sunflower Kindergarten in 2002 with adequate equipment and professional teachers.
Under her expert leadership, each teacher became a loving mother to the children. After only three years, the success was so striking, she obtained a much more important loan, enabling her to expand to a larger, more professsional set-up in a better environment, allowing her to better incarnate her dream that rural children, too, have a right to the best.
To read all about Lijuan XIANG in China, go to the Rural life prize and click on her name.
Sorry, I can not get other informations in english about her.
Some Links about China:
about the concept ‘Province‘ in China;
about China itself:
- on wikipedia;
- on China today.com;
- on China.org;
- China in the world fact book on wikipedia;
- China in the world fact book on the CIA web;
- on China 2007.