Project Manager: Bkra shis sgrol ma (QH Betty)
This project is to buy 675 books, including 415 Tibetan books, 205 Chinese Books, 55 English Books; 3 book shelves, 5 tables, 10 chairs, 4 LCD-projectors, and 20 teaching VCDs, for Gser lung Junior Middle School in Gser lung Township. Aiming to provide rich learning and teaching conditions for both teachers and students; to increase the rate of students passing examinations; to improve local students’ educational levels meanwhile ensuring that the female students’ higher chances of getting higher education; to reduce families financial burden and increase the number of students’ enrollment. .
Funds needed: $6,393(40,360rmb)
Bkra shis sgrol ma is from the Number One Production Brigade, Gser lung Village, Gser lung Township, Henan Mongolian Autonomous County, Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, China. Currently, she is studying for her Bachelor’s Degree in 2008 BA Class, Qinghai Nationalities Teacher’s College, Qinghai Normal University.
Project Location
Gser lung Junior Middle School is located (107.08 E, 34.28 N) between Gser lung Village and Sga khas village, in Gser lung Township, Henan Mongolian Autonomous County, Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, China. It is the only school where all of the villages’ children can complete both their primary and middle school educations in Gser Lung Township. This school is about 63 kilometers away from Henan County in the west, and 325 kilometers away from Xining, the capital city of Qinghai Province.
Population
1) Township Population: There are 678 households with 3678 people (1978 men and 1700 women), among them there are 747 students (381 males and 366 females) in total in Gser lung Township.
2) Gser lung Junior Middle School Population: There are 375 people in this school. 340 students (168 boys and 172 girls), 25 teachers (16 men and 9 women) and 10 none teaching employees (6 men and 4 women) in Gser lung Middle School.
Education
For Gser lung Township, there are 747 students in total: 340 primary (168 boys and 172 girls), 185 middle school students (101 boys and 84 girls), 182 high school students (88 boys and 94 girls), 40 university students (24 boys and 16 girls). Among university students, 33 students are studying for Associate’s Degrees and 7 students are studying for Bachelor’s Degrees. In total there are about 747 students are receiving education. However, this is a small number according to the population of this township. In this township, approximately 62% of the villagers are illiterate and around 38% of the villagers are literate. The villagers who are literate also includeds both the people who have attended schools and the monks in the monasteries. They could read and write Tibetan and a few Chinese words, but none of them could speak Mandarin Chinese except some of the students. A few villagers could speak Ningxia dialect (Han Chinese and Muslim province near to the project site) with Han Chinese businessmen selling livestock. None of them could speak English.
Among the students, primary and middle school students receive the government nine-year free education. As soon as the students finish their nine years’ free education, they have to attend high school. And many of them lose the opportunities to continue their education in the school because of financial problems. Since parents themselves never have been educated, many families don’t know the value of education. Thus, because of these families’ conditions, it is difficult for many families to afford tuition for their children. For all these kinds of reasons, not all children get the chance to attend school.
This is especially bad for girls because when they finish primary or middle school and try to get further education, the traditional idea or gender inequality causes most of the villagers to think that girls are not as capable to deal with difficult matters as boys are. Some of the parents hold the idea that girls have to marry, and they can’t help their parents’ homes. So, most of the villagers believe that sending girls to school is just waste of money. And brides go to live in their husbands’ village, so it is better that girls keep doing housework in the home until they marry.
Traditionally, the male is considered the head of the household, and a wife’s duty is to help and obey her husband, serve her husband’s family, and follow his parents’ orders. If a woman doesn’t know how to do housework and can’t be helpful for her husband’s family, the woman will be sent back to her parents’ home, villagers jeer at her inability, and it is difficult for them to get remarried. Because of this traditional way of thinking, there are fewer female students receiving education in the school.
Cash Income
Gser lung Township is a nomadic township with has five villages. NInety-eight percent of the families depend on livestock. Each family raises three kinds of animals,:horses, yaks, and sheep. Villagers earn income from selling yaks, butter, cheese, sheep, sheep wool, and animal skins. Some families earn money from renting their land to the caterpillar fungus collectors, caterpillar fungus is a medicinal herb that grows in certain areas. In total each family earns about 8,000 RMB to 9,000 RMB each year.
They need to spend around 4,000 RMB for buying different kinds of food: such as wheat flour, barley, rice, oil, vermicelli, potatoes and other vegetables. They spend about 3,000 RMB during the New Year and other festivals for food to share with family members and friends, clothes, gifts to give relatives and neighbors. Since villagers don’t have construction work skills, they have to spend about 1,000 RMB each year for hiring construction workers to repair old things or build new houses and walls. For example, wall repair to keep animals safe from wolves, thieves and cold weather; fence repair for dividing land between different families; winter home construction, and digging wells for water. Families spend about 1,000 RMB for daily necessities, such as electricity, medicine, children’s birthday celebrations, offerings to the monasteries, etc. Additionally, some families have to rent extra land for the animals to have enough grass to eat, because their own land doesn’t have enough grass or the land quality is too poor. Usually they don’t have any money left for saving.
If a family has a university student, they have to borrow money from thevillage leader or a local bank for tuition fees. Families who are poor and with high school students or middle school students pay tuition fees by borrowing money from rich villagers or relatives.
Herding
Gser lung Township is a nomadic area where families depend on livestock. In 1983, the government divided the common area into land plots with sizes coordinating to the number of their livestock and common among the families，according to family sizes. Each family has three kinds of animals: horses, yaks, and sheep. Men only herd animals, other house chores are done by women. For example, collecting yak dung, milking female yaks, producing butter and cheese, tailoring clothes, carrying water, and cooking food. Each family plot was separated it into two parts: ‘summer land’ and ‘winter land.’ Therefore, each family needs to move at least twice a year. So, women have to sew new tents for shelter and make homemade stoves for cooking at least twice a year. Some families have to move three times due to insufficient grass for livestock. They move to either ‘spring pasture’ or ‘autumn pasture’ for one or two months. Both ‘spring pastures’ and ‘autumn pastures’ were rented from other families which sold all their livestock and moved into the town. These families left their nomadic lifestyle to be drivers, businessmen, or security guards.
Agriculture
There is agriculture in Gser lung Township but because of the climate, which is dry in summer and cold in winter; and geology, rocky mountain ranges with deep canyons and valleys, it is not suitable for planting any crops. It is even difficult to grow trees in this place.
Project Goals
The immediate goal of this project is to buy 675 books, including 415 Tibetan books, 205 Chinese Books, 55 English Books; 3 book shelves, 5 tables, 10 chairs, 4 LCD-projectors, and 20 teaching VCDs, for Gser lung Junior Middle School in Gser lung Township. The overarching goals of this project are to provide rich learning and teaching conditions for both teachers and students; to increase the rate of students passing examinations; to improve local students’ educational levels meanwhile ensuring that the female students’ higher chances of getting higher education; to reduce families financial burden and increase the number of students’ enrollment.
Problems
No. 1) The Problems Caused by Book Shortage
1) Lack of study materials for students
Gser lung Junior Middle School only provides textbooks with basic knowledge. Each student has one book for each subject. They have few extra exercise-books to practice with and don’t have any other books to read from the in library. It is difficult for students to improve or get enough knowledge by only depending on textbooks.
2) Few students pass the high school entrance examinations
When students finish in primary school or middle school, they need to take entrance examinations of entering middle school or high school. It is also time to compare with other school students. Students get really depressed after they fail in competitions. Most of the students feel very embarrassed and under heavy stress after all the scores are shown in public. And it is also very hard for their parents to accept such bad results after 6 or 9 years of schooling. So they ask their children to stay at home and do housework. Entrance examinations stopped many students’ chances of getting a higher education.
3) Lowered interest in studying and development of bad habits
Because of lack of books to read from the library and few exercise-books to practice with, students can only depend on teacher’s own knowledge and skills. Since teachers don’t have any materials to use for teaching except the textbooks, the teachers have to make some exercises with their own knowledge. During the spare time teachers are busy preparing for class and making exercises, but the students don’t have any practice exercises to do if they felt that they understood the covered material so they just play all the time. If students pass the entrance examinations they tend to try to keep the traditional way of learning and following teachers’ arrangements or orders. This bad habit will continue and at the end, it would lead to a lazy learning environment for all students.
No. 2) The Problems Caused by Lack of LCD-Projector
1) Wasted time
In primary school, teachers have to write everything on the blackboard to teach the students. Sometimes it takes the whole class time for the teacher to write notes on the blackboard, for example, if the teacher writes an explanation which is not mentioned in the text book, and students need to copy on their note books, so it takes double the time. In middle school, teachers also have to write all the extra exercises which are arranged for practice. Therefore, writing wastes a lot of valuable class time.
2) Difficulties in understanding the textbooks
It is very difficult for the students to understand the words and some texts which are not related to nomadic areas or nomadic cultures, because all the students are from nomadic areas and have never traveled. Their knowledge of the outside world is very limited. For example, it is difficult for the students to recognize different kinds of vegetables and fruits through oral descriptions. It is also difficult for them to get any knowledge about farming, city life, etc. It is easier to remember vegetables and fruits when presented with shown by a LCD-projector. Without the LCD-projector, teachers can’t make use of their government-issued laptops.
3) Health Issues Related to Dust
When teachers write everything on the blackboards using chalk, classrooms are filled with dust. It makes the classroom dirtier and breathing in the chalk dust causes throat problems for students. It also leads to eye problems and other illnesses. If the teacher uses an LCD-projector, chalk use would reduce, and thus the classroom will be cleaner and it will be better for the students’ health.
4) Waste of teachers’ energy
Teachers not only have to write on the blackboards with chalk, but also have to stand up while they are writing, so they feel very tired after writing for a long time on the blackboards. If they show the notes and other material with the LCD-projector instead of writing all of them on the blackboard, they will waste less energy and time.
Benefits
No. 1) The Benefits of Library
1) Save time and money
If there is a library in the school, students can save both money and time. Students wouldn’t need to waste study time to buying books from far places. They can simply read books in the library. Students would save book buying money for both and the transportation fee for going to the book stores. This would reduce their families’ financial burden.
2) Students get more interested in studying
If there is a library in the school, students could learn more things and expand their knowledge by reading different kinds of books according to their interests. Students wouldn’t get bored by studying the textbooks only. They can be enriched through other stories or books. Students can also be inspired by reading many kinds of autobiographies of famous and successful people.
3) Improve student’s skills
By reading different kind of books, students can improve their comprehension skills, writing skills, as well as helping students to develop their thinking skills, creativity, and vocabulary. It would also help their examinations, too.
No. 2) The Benefits of LCD-Projector
1) Improve teaching quality by visual aid
If there is a LCD-projector in the classroom, teachers could teach new words by attaching pictures, and teach histories or stories by showing videos. It is easier for the students to understand with visual aids than with only oral explanations. Teachers can improve their teaching skills by using the latest and most up-to-date teaching materials which are used by other teachers on LCD projectors.
2) Reduce teachers’ burden
If there is an LCD-projector in the classroom, teachers can provide more materials that they collected from the internet by showing them on the LCD-project instead of taking a long time to write them on the blackboard. Thus the teachers could save both time and energy. It also can increase the teachers’ options of teaching methods. For instance, visual teaching methodology or auditory teaching style..
Broaden the perspective of the students
Because of land formations and inconvenient transportation, there are few people who have gone out of the township and there are few outsiders who come into this area. So both the students and parents do not have much knowledge of outside world. They just know what they can see in their daily lives. If there is an LCD-projector in the classroom, students will have more chances to watch movies and videos, and it will broaden students’ understanding of other cultures. Students will also get more information that could inspire them. For example, for the female students, it would be helpful if they see women from other cultures with successful stories and great experiences. Female students can be encouraged by that. In Gser lung Township many villagers hold the idea that girls are weaker than boys, so it would be helpful and necessary for the students to see movies about successful women or the struggles of women.
Gender Equality
Firstly, a library benefits both boys and girls equally. Secondly, LCD-projectors could encourage female students through showing movies about famous women; let students believe women are as capable as men. The school leader promised the project manager that they would show a female movie or film twice a month. Thirdly, the school leader and the project manager will choose 1 woman as the librarian among the teachers, which will help them to have extra working experiences. Additionally, if this project is funded, the project manager, a female will implement this project and she will be a good example for the female students. This will improve villagers’ perceptions of educated girls and which will raise the villagers’ awareness of the importance of educating girls.
Beneficiaries
This project will directly benefit more than 340 students and 25 teachers in Gser lung Junior Middle School and indirectly benefits 678 families in Gser lung Township.
Government Approval
On July 12th 2010, the project manager asked Gser lung Township leader, Angke, about this project. The leader gave her full permission to do this project.
Steps of Project
- Discuss the problems with the villagers in Gser lung Township and decide which is the most important one. (done)
- Collect information of the project location. (done)
- Talk about the problems and the benefits with school leaders and teachers. (done)
- Discuss with the teachers what kind of books they need in their library. (done)
- Go to the bookstores/ market to get the information about the books and things to buy and collect price information. (done)
- Calculate the prices of all the books, tables, chairs, and projectors. (done)
- Check extra fees including transportation fees, fees for technicians to install the projectors. (done)
- Write project proposal.
- Receive funds.
10. Buy books and LCD-projectors in Xining City.
11. Transport all the things to the school, put the books in the library and install the LCD-projectors in the classrooms.
12. Have a meeting with school teachers, village leaders, and students about the goals and plans of the project, take pictures and interview some beneficiaries
13. Write the final report
Timeframe
This project will take two weeks to complete
First Week: 1) two days: to buy all the books, book shelves
2) one day: to buy LCD-projectors, electrical curtain/screens, hangers, and wires
3) one day: to transport materials to the school
4) one day: to put the books in the library
5) one day: to install the projectors in the classrooms
6) one day: to hold a meeting, take pictures, and interview beneficiaries
Second Week: Write the final project
Project Budget
| Item | Price per item in RMB | Number of items | Donor contribution in RMB | Local contri bution in RMB |
Shem contri bution in RMB |
Total cost in RMB |
| Books | 675 | 7,660 | 0 | 0 | 7660 | |
| Book shelves | 250 | 3 | 0 | 750 | 0 | 750 |
| Tables | 90 | 5 | 0 | 450 | 0 | 450 |
| Chairs | 35 | 10 | 0 | 350 | 0 | 350 |
| LCD-projectors | 7,600 | 4 | 30,400 | 0 | 30,400 | |
| Teaching VCDs | 85 | 20 | 1,700 | 0 | 1,700 | |
| Skilled Laborers(to install LCD-projectors) | 2 | 100 | 200 | 0 | 0 | 200 |
| Transportation ( hire a truck from Xining to project site) | 1,500 | 1 truck | 0 | 1500 | 0 | 1,500 |
| Project management expenses (bus tickets, phone calls, and hotels) | 400 | 0 | 0 | 400 | ||
| Project management payment | 0 | 0 | 500 | 500 | ||
| Total Cost | 40,360 | 3,050 | 500 | 43,910 |
Donor Contribution in RMB: 40,360 RMB
Local Contribution in RMB: 3,050 RMB (Village leaders and school leader will pay for this)
Shem Contribution in RMB: 500 RMB
Total Cost: 43,910 RMB
Detailed Budget
| Item | Price per item in RMB | Number of items | Donor contri bution in RMB |
Local contri bution in RMB |
Shem contri bution in RMB |
Total cost in RMB |
| Tibetan Books | 435 | 3,438 | 0 | 0 | 3,438 | |
| Chinese Books | 205 | 3,372 | 0 | 0 | 3,372 | |
| English Books | 55 | 850 | 850 | |||
| Book Shelves | 250 | 3 | 0 | 750 | 0 | 750 |
| Tables | 90 | 5 | 0 | 450 | 0 | 450 |
| Chairs | 35 | 10 | 0 | 350 | 0 | 350 |
| LCD-projectors | 7,000 | 4 | 28,000 | 0 | 28,000 | |
| Electromotion screen/curtain | 500 | 4 | 2,000 | 2,000 | ||
| Projector hangers,screen/ curtain hangers, electrical wires |
100 | 4 | 400 | 400 | ||
| Teaching VCDes | 85 | 20 | 1700 | 0 | 1,700 | |
| Skilled Laborers (for put the books, instal the LCD-projectors) | 100/labor | 2 | 200 | 0 | 0 | 200 |
| Transportation ( hire a truck from Xining to project site) | 1500 | 1 truck | 0 | 1500 | 0 | 1,500 |
| Project management expenses (bus tickets, phone calls, and hotels) | 400 | 0 | 0 | 400 | ||
| Project management payment | 0 | 0 | 500 | 500 | ||
| Total Cost | 40,360 | 3,050 | 500 | 43,910 |
Sustainability
In order to make sure this project will be sustainable we have selected two women as librarians. Their duties include organizing the books in the library, lending and returning of the borrowed books, keeping the library clean, keeping the books in good condition, and opening the library on time during the weekends and weekdays. Students and teachers are allowed to borrow only one book at a time. Dictionaries and exercise books cannot be borrowed and can only used in the library. School leaders will inspect and review the conditions once a month. Librarians are responsible for any lost books, unreturned books and destroyed books.
LCD-projectors will be hanged in the ceiling of the classrooms; teachers use them during the classes. Class teachers are responsible for keeping them clean and in a good condition. If the LCD-projector is damaged after one year and nobody knows who damaged it, all the class teachers and the ones who use it will be responsible for maintaining the projector. But if the projector is damaged within one month, the business company or seller will replace the damaged projector with a new one; if the projector is damaged within two years, the business company or seller will take responsibility to repair the damaged projector as it will be under warranty.
Additional Information
1) The project manager has done a school project which is about to buy Chinese Dictionaries, notebooks, pencils to improve their studying situation, and some balls to play in the Physical Education class for the students of Gser lung Primary School. When she was in Huangnan ETP in 2003, she explained to the teacher the students’ poor studying conditions. Then, the teacher helped her and solved the problem. They gave the students some notebooks, dictionaries, and pencils to improve their study conditions; they also provided some balls to them for sports during the spare time.
2) In the spring of 2011, she has coordinated a Solar Flashlight Project with Shem Group’s help.
3) In 2011, she organized a library building project for the Third Primary School in Nin mtha Township of Henan County. She was helped by a teacher in Qinghai Normal University.
Map of the Project Location
