By Li Nai

Special to the Tsinghua News Center

In the first nine months of 2007, Tsinghua University’s School of Continuing Education, through its Education-Aiding-the-Poor Project, established 57 new distance education stations in remote and impoverished regions in Jiangxi, Hubei, Henan, Anhui, Gansu, Yunnan, Guizhou and Inner Mongolia. The project now includes a total of 170 stations in the most impoverished 12 counties throughout China.

(Volunteeres teach English)

Besides building distant education stations, Tsinghua also sends teams to rural areas every year. This summer, 340 Tsinghua teachers and students and 74 US volunteers went to 42 poor counties for over two weeks in August. They provided various programs to middle school teachers and students including computer and English courses, cultural lectures, and shared learning experience. Since 2003, the university has delivered education programs and services directly to over 4 million people in over 200 of China’s poverty-stricken counties. Mr. Wen He, a student from the Department of Electronic Engineering who went to Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, said, “We hope more people will make contributions to the children in these areas. It’s exciting to see the actual effects of our effort on local students. Poverty does not mean you have to give up hope. The most important thing is to have the confidence and courage to pursue your dream.”