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Joint efforts help arouse charity awareness
By Xiao Yang (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-01-25 05:58
About a year ago, when Zhang Yanli, president of the Beijing Charity
Association (BCA), saw the 2004 financial report of her organization, she felt
anxiety.
Donations the BCA received amounted to about 23 million yuan (US$2.9
million). Although there was a growth from prior years, a comparison with some
big city associations - such as the Shanghai Charity Foundation (SCF), which
received 240 million yuan (US$30 billion) in 2004 - dwarfed those of the
capital's major charity organization.
An elderly citizen writes Spring Festival
couplets in Chinese calligraphy at a square in downtown Quanzhou, East
China's Fujian Province. More than 10 Chinese calligraphy lovers from the
city's elderly citizen's college organized the event early this month to
attract donations for the hard-up families in the city by selling their
calligraphy work. [China Daily] |
For the nearly 200,000 people who rely on government relief and cannot afford
decent schooling and health care, the money was far from enough.
After contemplation, Zhang and her colleagues decided to promote harder. And
to do that, they needed to work more closely with the media.
But the association managed to find a powerful partner - the Beijing Evening
News, one of the largest circulation local newspapers. They designed a project
to solicit donations of artworks from artists living in Beijing for a charity
auction, with the Beijing Evening News agreeing to devote dozens of free pages
for advertising and promotion.
The revenue will be used for the BCA's current aid schemes, including health
assistance for 28,000 relief-taking senior citizens, an annual 1,000-yuan
(US$123) subsidy for each of 1,000 poor high school students, and 1,000
wheelchairs for the city's disabled every year.
"The media play an important role in charity," Zhang said. "On the one hand
they help discover cases where charity is needed, and on the other hand they can
arouse the public's charity awareness."
The involvement of the Beijing Evening News generated telling clout that
tallied with Zhang's assumption. Since July 15, the first day the newspaper
launched a full page promoting the charity project, the project's donation
hotline has been busy answering enquiries.
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