September 2010, One Foundation officially launched the "Illumination" and "Love Class" projects at Meigu county in Liangshan Prefecture. Deputy secretary of the CPC Meigu County Committee, County Magistrate Zikelage, Meigu Education Bureau Chief Qubiyihu, Liangshan Prefecture Women's Federation Chairman Ma, Liangshan Yi for Empowerment Center representatives and One Foundation  project staff attended the launching ceremony. The two projects will last for one year and will involve 188 villages in Meigu County and benefit eight million people, including 40 school-age orphans.

The Illumination Project

Launching Ceremony

        Liangshan has a concentrated population of absolute poverty. Hundreds of thousands of Yi people are living under an average annual income of less than 100 dollars. The County has a population of 180,734. 110 villages are poverty stricken, 70% of the poor people living in the mountains and mid-level areas. 150 villages still don’t have access to electricity, and 38 villages have partial power supply. Up to 83,757 people are living without electricity. Due to the lack of electricity, local Yi people are living in darkness at night; livelihood development and cultural education are severely hampered. The Meigy county has the largest population living without electricity in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture.

       One Foundation’s "Illumination" project aims to install for free 21,000 environmental friendly solar powered energy saving lamps for the villages without or only with partial power supply. It will benefit 83,757 people. At the same time to organize trainings to form the tutors for the village community to learn the use and maintenance of solar lights. Also community health education, literacy education and community-related trainings will be organized. After returning to their respective villages, the tutors will teach villagers and cadres the knowledge in evening classes and enable them to work both in Mandarin Chinese and the Yi dialect.

        After garnering successful experience from initial trials, One Foundation and the Liangshan Yi for Empowerment Center will promote the model of the project at Meigu county and eventually to the 17 counties and cities throughout the prefecture. This is expected to bring light to the remote Yi villages for higher production efficiency, wider spread of scientific knowledge and improve the people’s quality of living.

Love Class Project

        During the field inspection for the “Illumination” project, One Foundation’s team found out that due to persisted poverty and undeveloped civil environment, the villages suffer a rather isolated status. Drugs and HIV/AIDS are causing more and more social problems. The education of local children is another problem. More and more children are becoming orphaned, and finally form the poorest and most venerable group. They lack proper food and nutrient and death due to ill-nutrition continue to occur. Some children undertake heavy physical labor too early and this has severely hampered their healthy growth. Many school-aged children are forced to drop out of school.

        To alleviate the problem, One Foundation has decided to build a Love Class at Suomahua School in Meigu County. The class is organized in the fashion of boarding school, so that the children’s families will have less economic burdens. In line with the government’s nine-year compulsory education system, the class will be fitted with managers of everyday life and chefs. The class will also work closely with the school and local government to improve all aspects of the children’s life.

        This projects aims to help 40 poverty orphaned children to enable them to have basic access to education, physical and mental support. The experience accumulated will be used to create more opportunities for education for other orphaned children and villagers so that life and work can be improved in the region.

Love Class opens at Suomahua School

        June 2004, To make it in like with Convention on the Rights of the Child, UNAIDS expanded the definition of AIDS orphaned children to children under 18, whose one or both parents had died of AIDS.  It also emphasized the different needs among different age groups when it comes to reproductive health, life skills, vocational training, marriage and family.