Editor's Note: China Daily profiles three women from different backgrounds across the country who are succeeding in their chosen fields.
Zhu Dixinyao (third from left), secretary-general of MyH2O, poses for a photo with residents who benefited from the first public welfare water station in Gangu, Gansu province, in 2019. Zhu's NGO devises and implements solutions to improve the quality of drinking water in rural areas. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
NGO boss committed to community work
Zhu Dixinyao and her team at MyH2O are dedicated to improving the lives of villagers. They do this by conducting tests of drinking water sources in rural areas and finding ways to make them safe.
Since the NGO was founded in Beijing in 2015, it has mobilized thousands of university students as volunteers to visit more than 1,000 villages in 26 provinces, collecting more than 5,500 water samples for testing, said Zhu, the organization's secretary-general.
The 29-year-old graduate of Pitzer College in the United States said she opted to do full-time public welfare work in environmental protection after witnessing the hands-on efforts of her friends in the US. Having become interested in the environment at college, she worked as a volunteer for several public welfare groups.
"The changes that short-term support bring will be short-term changes. I am eager to see what happens to the people I helped, and whether there are good, long-term changes," she said.
"So, working in the field full time can help me better understand their problems and needs, provide sustainable support and bring about real change."
Zhu joined MyH2O in 2019, and she is now in charge of the organization's day-to-day operations and talent training.
Zhu (right) and her team test the water quality on a mountain in Garze Tibetan autonomous prefecture, Sichuan province, in 2019. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
The NGO's major campaigns are designed to devise and implement solutions to improve the quality of drinking water in rural communities and schools. For example, in 2019, it opened its first public welfare water station in Gangu, Gansu province, a semiarid region in Northwest China.
During the dry season, the villagers used to store drinking water in their cellars. However, it became turbid after standing for long periods, and people had to buy bottled water for children and guests during festivals.
"Water turned out to be a luxury," Zhu said.
Since the first station opened, more such projects have been implemented in dozens of villages across seven provinces, including Yunnan and Hebei.
Initially, one of the biggest challenges the NGO's volunteers faced was winning over residents in some villages. For example, when they discovered poor-quality water and made plans to install a purification station, some locals had concerns about how the move might affect the settlement's reputation.
For example, some would ask "Are you here to sell water purifiers?" or "Are you here to accuse us of not doing a good job?" or "What financial benefits will you get?"
However, thanks to the assistance of other nonprofits who were familiar with the villages, the communication problem was quickly overcome.
From 2015 to last year, MyH2O collected data and information from more than 1,000 villages in 26 provinces to further formulate solutions to improve the safety of drinking water in remote places.
"We use the data for policy advocacy. We can produce examples, papers, reports and white papers, and deliver them to the relevant government departments," Zhu said.
"We hope we can bring about a change in policy from top to bottom and solve the problem of rural drinking water on a large scale."
Zhu conducts a field survey in Ulaanqab, Inner Mongolia autonomous region, in 2021. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
According to the National Development and Reform Commission, the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project, a government initiative, has provided safe drinking water for 280 million rural residents nationwide over the past decade, while also consolidating and improving the security of supplies for 340 million people in the countryside.
Zhu and her team have witnessed the changes. Last year, during a field survey at a village primary school in Hebei, Zhu was delighted to find that the water quality was up to standard, and that supply equipment had been installed.
"When we went to some villages a few years ago, the residents used shoulder poles and buckets to carry water. Recently, those villages have been connected to a supply network and faucets have been installed in people's homes," she said.
A stable institution must have a stable team, though, and recruitment is sometimes a headache for Zhu.
"It is hard to find experienced communication personnel and environmental science researchers who are willing to work for public welfare institutions for a long time. Most of the money we receive from the foundation, corporate sponsorship, individual donations and crowd-funding flows to the countryside," she said. "Almost all public welfare organizations find it difficult to attract outstanding people to work for them as they are not well-funded, so salaries are low."
Her biggest hope this year is that her team can find more outstanding young volunteers who are willing to deepen their experience and long-term development in the fields of public welfare, environmental protection and water resources.
Yu Guowen hikes on Hongluo Mountain in Beijing in 2019. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Researcher praises the kindness of strangers that changed her life
Financial support from the Spring Bud Project, which provides education for rural girls, changed Yu Guowen's fate, taking her from a mountainous area of Jiangsu province to become a researcher in Beijing.
"Over the years, the kindness of society has brought me strength and sustained me through every stage of my life," said the 34-year-old, who was born in a village in the north of Nanjing, Jiangsu's capital.
In 1995, when Yu was in primary school, illness was the main cause of her family's poverty, she said.
The family's low income meant its members were malnourished, so her grandparents, mother and younger sister were forced to spend money they could not afford on medication.
Her parents made a living by farming and working odd jobs, but they never thought of allowing her to drop out of school, despite their financial problems.
"I am really lucky to have such a family. At the time, many parents in my village still believed that it was pointless for girls to study," Yu said.
At the time, there were 24 students in her class, but only eight were girls. Later, two girls dropped out. "One of them left to support her brother's education," Yu said.
In 1989, the China Children and Teenagers' Fund launched the Spring Bud Project, a welfare program that mobilizes social forces to help girls who have dropped out return to school, and to improve teaching conditions in poverty-stricken areas.
In 1999, the project started funding Yu as a reward for her excellent academic performance. In addition, strangers donated books, stationery and clothing.
After graduating from high school, she was admitted to Nanjing Normal University's applied math major.
Later, she gained a master's and a doctorate from Beijing Normal University, and then enrolled in a postdoctoral program at the school.
In 2019, she finished the program and entered the Beijing Academy of Educational Sciences as a researcher.
Her job is to communicate with teachers every week to stay abreast of teaching practices.
"I know that teaching is a profession that can bring the brightest things to people. Although I am not a teacher, I talk with them and their students every week, which makes me happy," she said.
Having been helped by strangers, Yu has always been keen to take part in social work. At university, she volunteered to work in hospitals so she could help people who had difficulty hearing and speaking.
She also volunteered to teach at a school for children of migrant workers. The school was remote and inaccessible, so many of the volunteers who went with her gave up halfway. However, Yu persevered to the end of the allotted period.
In her opinion, voluntary service is a two-way street of giving and receiving. "The experience of volunteering inspires me to face difficulties with optimism because I know they will pass," she said.
So far, the Spring Bud Project has helped more than 2.81 million poverty-stricken girls return to the classroom, and built 1,402 Spring Bud schools. A large number of the students it has helped have become professionals, including army officers, teachers, doctors and scientific workers.
In 2013, the enrollment rate of girls in China's primary schools reached 99.72 percent, slightly higher than the figure for boys.
In 2018, a report published by the National Bureau of Statistics said the gender gap in the country's compulsory education system had basically been eradicated.
Zhang Cuiyan (center), owner of an agricultural company in Zhongwei, Ningxia Hui autonomous region, harvests apples with local farmers. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Apples provide food for thought for fruit growers in rural areas
After quitting work as an architectural designer, Zhang Cuiyan began selling apples on behalf of farmers in her hometown in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region.
For decades, there were few sales channels for apples grown in Zhongwei city's Shapotou district. That meant it was hard to sell them nationally, so local farmers had to carry their produce to the central market in the city's downtown.
As a child, Zhang often visited the market with her parents. "I remember that one day, after hours of waiting in a long line of farmers in the scorching sun, my parents finally got a chance for middlemen to pick and purchase their fruit. However, the agents had picked enough of other people's fruit and only bought a few of ours," the 39-year-old recalled.
"My parents had to carry the rest of the fruit back home because they could not sell it for a good price at the small market. I felt sad for them, because growing apples was not an easy job."
After graduating from university, Zhang opened an architectural design company with her husband in Ningxia. However, she quit in 2011 to start a new company, Ningxia Shenju Agricultural Science and Technology Development.
That gave her the opportunity to take her parents back home. "I returned to my hometown because my parents could not get used to living in the city," she said.
"They just couldn't forget their apples. I was born and raised in the village, so I decided to help them sell the produce."
The key was finding middlemen to introduce the apples to consumers across the country, because Ningxia's apples were not as well-known as those from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
"At the beginning, people didn't believe that Shapotou apples were any good. I told the middlemen that they should come to our place and take a look. People tend to stereotype Ningxia as a desert area where the residents ride camels to work, so they should come here and learn about how our economy is developing," she said.
The middlemen quickly began earning a profit from the apples, so Zhang opened her own sales channel. At the same time, she organized about 200 female farmers in a WeChat group and encouraged them to promote their apples on WeChat Moments. For every box they sold, each individual could earn 20 yuan.
"After making some money, the women's confidence grew and they became more dedicated to their careers," Zhang said.
In 2015, she built the first agricultural produce trading market in the village, providing cold-storage rooms and a transportation chain for about 1,200 fruit farmers.
As her company grew, she needed further investment. So in 2017, Zhang obtained an interest-free loan of 500,000 yuan ($73,000) from the China Women's Development Foundation via a program initiated in 1996 to help women build careers.
She received the financial aid after the local federation, which administers the foundation, visited the village and discovered that Zhang's company supported many women.
"The timely aid brought us great benefits, and the farmers were also very happy about it. The following year, my company obtained another loan of 500,000 yuan," she said.
In 2019, she focused on selling apples online, hiring about 50 people for her e-commerce platform. Now, sales generate income of 50 million yuan a year.
She has also cultivated new species of apples at her base and trained farmers in cultivation skills.
"I am quite comfortable and happy to do business in my hometown, especially after discovering that the villagers have such great potential. It's interesting to interact with farmers every day. To share the joy, they tell me how many boxes of apples they have sold and how much money they have made," she said.
She added that the villagers used to earn just 120 yuan a day working odd jobs in cities. Now, though, they can make the same amount simply by selling a few boxes of apples, she said.
