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Do you look forward to falling in love? What do you think falling in love will be like?  These are some questions, Xiaochun, a teacher at Tuanjie Town Middle School in Yunnan asked students during a CWEF-sponsored mental health class this past fall. 

Teacher Teng talked in depth with students about how to have healthy romantic relationships.  Together they discussed many things including the difference between liking someone and loving someone:

• Liking: Refers to mutual empathy, which includes a positive assessment of each other as well as a shared respect and appreciation.
• Loving: Includes a need for intimacy with the other person. It also includes a shared dependency and tendency to help each other. Additionally, it involves exclusively loving that one person. 

The class also discussed 5 principles that contribute to having a healthy romance:

1. Expectations: Clarify the emotional expectations for yourself and others. 
2. Timing: early adulthood (18-25 years old) is an important time for establishing intimacy, students should reserve their best selves for the right person. 
3. Distance: students discussed four types of interpersonal distance, so that they can understand the importance of maintaining appropriate interpersonal boundaries 
4. Capacity to Love: students were encouraged to first learn to love themselves and then to develop an ability to understand and work well with others before seeking out a romantic relationship
5. Alignment of Values: students reflected on the importance of sharing the same values with their significant other 

Concluding Message:

Always believe in love and look forward to it. Have the confidence to love yourself. Cultivate an ability to love others. Love can be perfect, or it can have regrets. Whether the students experience the luck of falling in love at first sight or the sadness of unrequited love, both are part of life. It is hoped that students can face the gains and losses in their future relationships with a positive attitude, learn to grow through love, and have faith that someday they will enjoy sharing life with someone who is a great match for them!

THANK YOU for partnering with CWEF and supporting the mental health of young people in China!  Because of you, these students have a better chance of enjoying healthier romantic relationships and making wise choices about love both now and in the future.

Few decisions are as impactful on personal thriving as the ones made about love and romance. Thank you for being part of equipping these students to become leaders that will strengthen their own communities.

Hello!  Thank you for generously supporting education for young girls from Yunnan China!

 One of the young ladies you support, Zibu, wrote you a thank you letter. Here are a few excerpts from it:

#1 “Despite my family’s poverty and my parents’ constant ill health, which prevents them from working outside the home to earn a living, I have always lived frugally at school, constantly worried about overspending and adding to their burden. However, since receiving your generous financial support, I have felt less burdened and more confident. My parents have also been relieved, and my entire family is deeply touched. We have realized that even in dark times, there is light and warmth.”

#2 “Thanks to your selfless assistance, we have overcome one obstacle after another.”

#3 “Your support has been like a boat on my academic journey, carrying my boundless hopes and dreams across vast seas, propelling me towards poetry and distant horizons. No matter how arduous or tiring life and studies may be, they cannot deter my steps. For on my path of endeavor, your care and companionship have ensured that I never feel lonely or lost.”

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Did you catch that? According to Zibu, YOU have helped her feel less burdened and more confident. YOU have shown her that even in dark times there is hope. YOU have helped her overcome many obstacles.  And YOU have ensured that she never feels lonely or lost. THANK YOU for standing in the gap and generously helping to educate young women in rural China like Zibu!  

*Please note that, due to new laws, we are no longer able to share images of our scholarship students.  Even without their faces, I hope that you can hear Zibu’s gratitude for all that you have done. 

Would you like to know when there are opportunities to support students like Zibu? Sign up for CWEF updates here.

By Hayley Steinbauer, Program Impact Coordinator, Cambodia

Interview with Navin, CWEF Scholarship Student studying Public Administration 

Navin climbs the steep stairs to show me where she and the other students sleep. The room is large and has around three bunk beds. There is a bathroom unattached from the bedroom. She lives in a Christian dorm with six other girls while she studies in Phnom Penh. Most universities in Cambodia do not have housing options on campus; students either live with family or rent out a single, windowless small room big enough for a bed and a few belongings.   

Those from rural areas may not have family living in Phnom Penh and renting a room may be too expensive. It’s a roadblock for many students. On top of that, young believers are leaving their church communities back home. In a country that is 3% Christian, young Christian believers, who are often first-generation Christians, are thrust into a new environment without their usual support systems.  

Can you imagine living your whole life in a village with less than 115 families and then moving to a city with 3 million people where you don’t know anyone? Can you imagine being a new believer and having to leave your church community? It sounds like a recipe for leaving the faith and dropping out of school, doesn’t it? But it doesn’t have to be that way. 

CWEF recognizes that graduating with a degree is one achievement but also growing in character and faith is vital. We care about who they are becoming, not just what they know. So, we connect our Cambodian scholarship recipients with vetted dorms that can also be spiritual communities.  

That is Navin’s story. As a recipient of a CWEF scholarship, we connected Navin with a Christian dorm in Phnom Penh. The dorm is safe, clean, and provides her with continued spiritual and emotional support. The Christian community further develops her faith while she is attending university.

Navin enjoyed her first year studying Public Administration. She participated in many group projects and trips that allowed her to grow professionally. And she also had a lot of chances to build relationships in her dorm.  

None of this would be possible without your donations. Thank you for supporting new believers as they grow academically and spiritually. By giving to the scholarship program in Cambodia, you are helping to make disciples of all nations!  

Q&A WITH NAVIN:

1. Tell me about your family. How would you describe your hometown? For girls, what is the norm in your hometown – do girls get married young, drop out of school, graduate from high school?   My name is Navin. I have 5 siblings, 2 brothers, 2 sisters and me. My father passed away in 2013. In the last few years my mother was not sick. She went to the rice field in seasons to do farming. When she has time free and is not working in the rice field she does housework. My village is a remote area. It is not far from district, but it is not too big. There are only 115 families. People know my village because we have a lot of children there who do not go to school. The majority of girls stop studying at the age of 15 years old and are then up for marriage. Other girls work outside the country. 

2. How many people were in your high school graduating class? Six hundred people have graduated from my high school. My class had 33 students, 19 girls and there were only 5 girls that continued onto university.   

3. How many of your family members have been to university?  In my family, I’m the only one to study at university.    

4. How has your family reacted to you wanting to attend university?  I told my mother, I would continue to the university. She allowed me to attend, but she did not have enough money for me if I continued. So I needed to find someone to support me because she was not able to support me.    

5. What will this university degree do for your future?  After I graduate, I am going to apply to a good job.  

6. Is it easy or hard to get a job with the degree you are getting? Why or why not?  When I get my graduation certificate it is easy to apply for jobs. Recently, they need people who have graduated with degrees in public administration. 

7. How much does a someone in public administration make in a year?  The income for working in public administration is $3160 to $5600 a year. 

8. Why did you want to go to university?  I went to university because I want to help myself, family, and my external society through my special skills and resources that I have, especially in learning the Bible from Jesus.  

9. Would you have been able to attend university without this scholarship?  I continued in the university without a scholarship, but I was troubled with finances between studying and working together.

10. If you could say something to one of our donors, what would you say? If I met with the donors, I would like to say thank you for supporting my study in the university.                                                                                   

As an adult, are there things you wish someone had told you earlier in life? To help young people be well-prepared on important life issues, CWEF is incorporating practical life lessons into its mental health course. CWEF partners teach this course to 250 migrant children at Bohua School in a rural area of Yunnan, China.

Connecting with the students through humor

Icebreakers before the start of class

Preparing for Adulthood. One of these recent mental health classes focused on preparing sixth grade students for many of the physical and emotional changes they will experience in puberty. At first the students shyly declined to speak. But under their teacher’s guidance, they eventually opened up about this normally-taboo subject. Through the class, teachers encouraged the students to also accept themselves and the changes they will experience. Teachers encouraged students to look forward to becoming adults.

Talking about the physical changes of puberty

Live intentionally. To help students be intentional with their futures, the teachers gave every student a paper which was folded into 10 sections. The students assumed, for the sake fo the exercise, that their lives would be 100 years long and that each section of the folded paper represented 10 years of their life. Then each student closed their eyes. They reflected on how they felt about the first ten years of their life, which is all the years that they’ve lived so far.

Writing down one of her dreams for the future

After this they tore off the first section of paper, wrote their feelings down, and put the torn off paper into a box. Then the teachers instructed them to take some time to think. Think about what they wanted to do with the 9 remaining sections of their lives. In this way, students appreciated how they can’t get the past back. But they also reflected on how they can make the most of the time they have left.

By supporting our work in Yunnan, you are providing migrant children with the opportunity to cultivate vision for their futures and learn practical life lessons that may pay out enormous dividends over their lives. THANK YOU for partnering with CWEF to educate and equip children from disadvantaged areas of China, helping them to become servant leaders in their own communities!

Would you like to hear about opportunities to help educate young people from disadvantaged areas of China? If so, sign up for our mailing list by clicking here: RECEIVE CWEF UPDATES.

by Jenny Chu, Jesus Arroyo & Josh Lange

The cistern is now complete, the pipes are laid, and each family in Yanmaidi has renewed access to reliable, clean drinking water! Because of your generous giving, our friends in rural Yunnan province have received the beautiful New Year’s gift of renewed health, hope and vitality after years of frustrations and limitations.

CWEF staff traveled to Yanmaidi on January 10 to celebrate the completion of the project with the village’s families and local government leaders.

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Prior to the completion of the new water system, Yanmaidi’s drinking water had been delivered using a series of old, low-quality plastic pipes that looped around the village. These pipes were degrading and fragile. The pipes would burst during the rainy season due to an overload of water and would freeze during the winter causing similar problems. During droughts, the water system was unable to deliver water effectively, causing many residents to hike 800 meters to a nearby reservoir to collect water, several times per day. The outdated system required constant maintenance and left families with no water when things went wrong. Even when water was available, the quality of the water was not good because of contamination in the system due to constant pipe breakages.

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100% of the village households made contributions to bring the project to a successful completion. Each family contributed a small amount of their own money and a considerable amount of their own physical labor to complete the project.

During her recent visit to help celebrate the project’s completion, CWEF’s Jenny Chu also facilitated a health training session focused on drinking water safety, personal hygiene, prevention of common illnesses, safe use of pesticides, and women’s health care.

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Zhang Zhenghua has resumed his role as the water system manager (in a previous story, we highlighted Zhang’s wife Yicun). Zhenghua and Yicun expressed their delight with the completed project. Zhenghua no longer worries about being woken up at midnight to fix a broken pipe. Pipe repair will no longer be a daily struggle for the Zhang family, which will give them more time to focus on their crops and other work. With his newfound time, Zhenghua hopes to be able to improve his family’s life by raising more livestock of their own.

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Here are a few additional notes about the project’s ongoing maintenance, which all residents agreed upon and committed to at a recent village meeting:

• The water system fee will increase from 5 to 10 yuan per person per year. Zhenghua’s salary will stay the same, and the additional 5 yuan per person will go to a fund to be used for maintenance and repair costs.
• Every six months, a team of three will work together to clean the main cistern.
• CWEF plans to conduct a comprehensive follow-up evaluation of the project at Yanmaidi in 2022, two years after the project’s completion.

Yanmaidi’s village leader, Zhang Linzhong, expressed his deep gratitude to everyone who has made this project possible. He shared that in the future they hope to improve on the water system by expanding it to reach more of their fields. He also shared his dream of installing street lights throughout the community, and in the future plans to expand sales of their organic produce to nearby cities where they will sell for a better price.

In closing, Mr. Zhang shared with us that he plans to live in Yanmaidi with his family for the rest of his life, continuing to help the village that raised him as a child to grow and thrive.

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by Jenny Chu, CWEF Yunnan Health Programs Director

When I first visited Yanmaidi village in September of 2018, it didn’t look much different from other villages in this part of Yunnan province. Most of the buildings are made of mud bricks and concrete, along with a few modern-style buildings. However, when I entered my host Mr. Hu’s house, he had a surprise for me. He picked up a wooden board from the ground to reveal a small pit underneath, and he showed me the buried water pipe under his home that had cracked due to wear and tear over time. He had dug up his floor in order to repair it. He told me this was typical throughout Yanmaidi, and that many of the families in the village had the same experience.

Mr. Hu has played a key role in the drinking water project in Yanmaidi. He sought out CWEF’s local partner in Lufeng county through his own contacts, assisted in the pre-project baseline survey, and hosted visitors from a CWEF service learning team for meals at his home in Spring 2019.

Mr. Hu is 37 years old. He was born in Yanmaidi and, together with his parents and grandfather, continues to live and work here as a farmer. The family grows wheat, corn, chili peppers, and yams. They also cultivate chestnut, walnut, and bayberry trees, as well as collecting wild mushrooms in the forest areas surrounding their village. Previously, Mr. Hu had moved away from Yanmaidi to work as a seasonal migrant laborer for two years.

In recent years, life has been getting better in Yanmaidi. A paved road was recently built all the way into the village, and cash crops are increasingly replacing traditional crops, slowly creating higher incomes for village families. In 2018, the average annual income per person was 3,500 yuan (about US$500).

One exception to the positive trends in Yanmaidi has been the village’s drinking water system. The system’s pipes have been wearing out and breaking down for years, and many families’ water frequently stops flowing, mainly due to water pipes constantly rupturing and needing repair. When the water supply gets cut off, Mr. Hu and other families need to walk about one kilometer to go collect water. Going back and forth multiple times every day to carry water consumes valuable time and energy, which they could be using to attend to their farming and other labor work. As you can imagine, the deteriorating water system has created many frustrations and limitations for the families here.

Each family in Yanmaidi is participating in the drinking water project supported by CWEF by contributing a portion of the required funds from their own meager incomes, along with the physical labor needed to dig trenches and lay all of the new pipes and cisterns that will make up the renewed system.

When the project is completed, Mr. Hu and everyone in Yanmaidi will feel a strong sense of satisfaction and ownership in their village’s drinking water system. After years of frustration and limitations, they will be grateful to say goodbye to hours of wasted time carrying water and hello to renewed health, hope and vitality.

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Through the end of December, generous friends of CWEF have pledged a 100% match for all gifts up to a total of US$20,000. Give clean water to one family in Yanmaidi, and a second family will also be blessed with the beautiful gift of a reliable, convenient source of clean water!

Fifty-year-old Ounpich is a gregarious person. She laughs throughout conversations and gestures confidently with her hands. Ounpich beams as she talks about her 27-year-old son. He studied management at a university in Phnom Penh and is now working for World Vision, the global Christian non-profit organization. She is extremely proud of him.

Ounpich mainly grows rice and raises chickens for her daily needs. Her cheerful exterior alone might never reveal the issues she encounters as a farmer in Cambodia during extreme seasons. She showed us how far the floodwater reaches by pointing to a spot on the stilts supporting her house — sometimes up to eight feet. When it floods, she cannot work in her fields. Consequently, Ounpich can go without an income for up to two months each year.

The harsh contrast to the flooding season is the drought that comes during the summer. Ounpich says the ground has been especially dry this year, and she must water the plants three times a day in order to keep them healthy. Besides working in the rice fields, she tends a personal garden behind her home, where she grows many more vegetables. She eats some of these herself, gives some to neighbors, and sells the rest, which earns her about 20,000 riels (about $5 USD) per day.

Ounpich has benefitted significantly from the BioSand Water Filter that CWEF provided to her. She uses the filtered clean water for daily drinking, cooking, cleaning, and brushing teeth. Ounpich’s health has improved greatly as she no longer gets ill from drinking unclean water. Using the BioSand Filter also frees up the time she used to spend each day collecting firewood to boil water from a nearby well so that it can be safely consumed. With overall improved health, Ounpich is better prepared to face the challenges of a farmer’s life.

Your generous contributions to this project make it possible for CWEF to renew health and hope for people like Ounpich who are facing the challenges of rural poverty.

In addition to the gift of Biosand Water Filters, CWEF trains families in proper maintenance of their filter, along with education on proper sanitation and hygiene, and its effect on disease prevention and overall health. With proper care and maintenance, each water filter can provide a family with clean water for more than 20 years.

In 2020, we hope to reach even more families in Ounpich’s community with the precious and transformative gift of clean water. A gift of just $25 provides clean water for one child, and $100 provides clean water for an entire family.

Behind Yufeng’s smile is a story of rare hardships and also precious optimism. She is the eldest of four children, born to farmers in rural Yunnan province. Yufeng’s mother was injured in a traffic accident and cannot perform much manual labor. Additionally, her parents provide care for Yufeng’s grandparents.

At the age of eight, Yufeng began suffering from a rare and serious bone infection in her leg. Doctors recommended amputation, but her parents refused the advice and spent most of their scarce income on medical treatment to spare her leg. Yufeng’s medical challenges continued when she was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 2011.

Yufeng shares, “Although my foot is disabled, I think my mind is important and I have a thankful heart.” She began High School in 2016, with the support of a CWEF scholarship, at the age of 23.

“My family is poor so I study harder than others. I want to change it. When I’m in trouble, I always face it bravely.”

Her strong spirit was tested again in 2018, when she underwent surgery on her leg to treat varicose veins, which caused her to repeat her second year of high school. Tragically, Yufeng underwent another surgery in 2019 to remove a portion of her lung, following a pulmonary infection.

In spite of everything she has been through, Yufeng has developed a wonderfully positive outlook on life.

“My life is full of sun. I will smile at everything. I think attitude is everything. I will never give up on my dream….in the future I want to become an English teacher.”

Yufeng wants to “change her frustration into wealth” and use the pain and difficulty she has experienced in the first part of her life to enrich her adult years.

Yufeng is grateful for the love and care that she received from CWEF, her teachers, classmates and others, many of whom fundraised online to help pay for her surgeries. She plans to graduate from High School in June 2020, at the age of 27. Without a doubt, her smile will continue to radiate hope and joy as she takes the next steps into pursuing her dream of becoming an English teacher.