SAN FRANCISCO, April 7 (Xinhua) -- A group of ethnic Tibetan youths from a poverty-stricken village in China's Sichuan Province will make their first overseas trip to the United States to widen their horizons as part of a United Nations (UN) poverty-relief program, an organizer said Sunday.
Hwa A. Lim, a board member of Asian Hustle and Salsa Association (AHSA) World, a California-based nonprofit organization dedicated to skills development, literacy promotion and poverty alleviation, said six ethnic Tibetan youths from a village in Pingwu County, Sichuan Province will come to California in celebration of World Dance Day.
"They'll be visiting us for about 10 days. We'll take them to different schools, to different places, and even to visit some companies," he said.
The ethnic Tibetan youths will perform a Chinese intangible heritage "Yak Dance," a traditional ritual dance popular among ethnic Tibetan groups in Sichuan, at the 2019 AHSA World Dance Day Charity Night on April 28 in the San Francisco Bay Area, Lim said.
AHSA World held the event to mark World Dance Day, which falls on April 29, and this year's celebrations will focus on the theme of poverty-relief and quality education, said Lim, who is a bioinformatics expert at the UN Food and Agricultural Organization and a member of the International Dance Council (CID).
The CID is a non-governmental organization founded in 1973 within the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) headquarters in Paris, France.
"We encourage everybody to help out so that everybody can be on the same boat," Lim said. "This year we target those impoverished children of the ethnic Tibetans in remote areas of western China."
Carmelita Chao, president of AHSA World, said poverty relief is one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). "We are very happy to give opportunities to those ethnic Tibetan young people to help them come out of the mountains to see the wonderful outside world."
AHSA World is the sponsor of the project "When Creativity Meets Poverty Alleviation and Education" nominated for the 2018 UNESCO Literacy Prizes, which was later incorporated into the SDG4-Education 2030 agenda. Its aim is to help poverty-hit children become literate and develop skills for future careers.