By Wu Bangfu and Jamyang

November 17, 2007

Contents:

*Background                               *Selection of County and Schools

 *Building the Greenhouses         *The Education Bureau and Schools’ Contribution

 *The First Harvest

The climate of Kham, which is too cold to grow most vegetables in the open air, precipitated Kham Aid Foundation to have helped the remotely nomadic schools in Kham with greenhouse construction. Thanks to Ride for Green which attracted seven cyclists in the summer of 2006, Kham Aid Foundation successfully raised almost US$50,000 to continue our Greenhouse project for the better nutrition for Tibetan children in Kham.

After the KAF program officers comparing the enthusiasm of the local government departments, the program implementation feasibility, and the potential deliverables amongst the candidate counties in Ganzi Prefecture, Litang County was finally selected. Litang County is located in the southern part of Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan Province, with the average elevation of 4,133.7 meters above sea level. The school children in remote area of Litang County have suffered from malnutrition due to privation of fresh vegetables, and brought about students’ dropping-out-of-school, as arouses the governmental awareness as well.

With the funds raised in 2006, KAF planned to support ten nomadic schools with greenhouse construction, for a total of more than 1,200 nomadic students benefiting. But considering that this is the pilot year for KAF to build greenhouses under such harsh climate, we were determined to build five greenhouses for five nomadic schools, and build five more greenhouses next year after obtaining experience through the pilot year which will allow us to make the program more successful.

In March, we sent representatives to visit all the ten candidate schools, which are all located in remotely nomadic areas with the elevation range of 3,500 meters to 4,300 meters, provided by Litang County Education Bureau in accordance with KAF’s selection criteria. Needy though all the schools are, after taking a careful consideration, we finally selected five township central primary schools — Xiongba, Gawa, Lamaya, Juewu and Labo. Totally approximately 600 nomadic students in the five schools, including more than 325 boarding students, can benefit from the fresh vegetables produced in the greenhouses.

Even before finalizing the school selection, KAF started to select a contractor for building the greenhouses. After comparing four contractors, we selected the most available contractor— Lobta, who has built dozens of greenhouses for many years in high plateau areas with the similar harsh climate as in Litang County.

The construction work started in early May and ended at the end of May. The greenhouses were built with steel structure, with the roofs covered by good-quality made-in-Italy soft plastic. Totally, it cost 200,000 CNY. While building the greenhouses, we encountered lots of difficulties, such as how to solve potential damages which might be caused by gales, hails, snowstorms and other natural disasters. But the most difficult problem is privation of funds. According to our plan, we would invest 40,000 CNY for each greenhouse with the size of 12 meters wide and 80 meters long. Although the fund was insufficient for such a big greenhouse because of the costly materials and expensive man-powers in Litang, moreover, we had to purchase some materials in Chengdu, which couldn’t be obtained in Litang or Kangding, the contractor tried his best to make careful use of each penny, we actually completed building greenhouses, with each one 30 square meters larger than our scheduled size, with the help of the schools and education bureau.

While building the greenhouses, both of the education bureau and the schools also contributed a lot for the construction. Each school has provided accommodation for builders and some schools even provided food for them to guarantee the smooth and successful construction. The education bureau has especially arranged one staff to help with cooperation as well. No sooner had the greenhouses been constructed completely than each school arranged a teacher in charge of the administration of the greenhouses, including preparing for vegetables growing.

Approximately one and half months later after the completion of the construction, a total of approximately 500 young school children enjoyed the first harvest—the fresh and great taste of vegetables of cabbage, radish, green onion, celery, etc. Thanks to the fresh vegetables which most of the students have never eaten at home, more children are willing to attend school, their parents are satisfied with the diet in school as well.

Many thanks to Kham Aid donors, you contribution has made a great difference!