Encyclopedias Donated to Poverty-Relieve ProgramThree leading cultural organs on July 11 presented copies of the Abridged Encyclopedia Britannica to libraries in 50 poor counties in west China.The move, as part of the country's poverty-relieve program, was initiated by the China Poverty-Relieve Committee of Culture, the Ministry of Culture and the Encyclopedia of China Publishing House. The cultural committee, founded in 1993, has launched a massive program, "Ten Thousand Village Libraries", to improve library facilities in the poor areas. So far, as many as 60,000 village libraries have been set up with its help. Statistics show that library project is not available in 159 Chinese counties, most of which are in the underdeveloped western region. A number of charitable programs are launched in China to help develop the western poverty-stricken areas. Project Hope was started 1990 to help school dropouts get back into school, and in the past decade has returned more than 2.2 million rural children back to classrooms. And the Glory Project, initiated in 1994 by private businesspeople, has so far funded 3,829 poverty-relief works with more than 10 billion yuan of investment. In addition, the project also helped train 733,600 poor people, found jobs for 761,500, and enable nearly two million people to have sufficient food and clothing. |
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