Since the 18th CPC Congress in 2012, China has seen enormous changes in many aspects. As part of Chinese philanthropy, children charities have made huge progress over the past five years, especially in the development of concept, model, and communication, as well as in public trust improvement.

Zhu Xisheng, secretary-general of China Children and Teenagers’ Fund (CCTF), said as China has been implementing the strategic layout of the "Four Comprehensives" — comprehensively build a moderately prosperous society, comprehensively deepen reform, comprehensively advance the rule of law and comprehensively and strictly govern the Party, a healthy and stable environment was created for the fast development of children charities in China.

In line with national efforts to get rid of poverty

The CCTF has launched a series of projects to get rid of poverty over the past 30 years since its establishment. Since the 18th CPC Congress, the CCTF has played its part to get children out of poverty through increasing education, improving health condition, and taking care of exceptional children.

 

The "Spring Bud" project was launched in 1989 to help dropout girls return to school. With an improved screening and review mechanism, it ensures the limited charitable funds to be used for those girls in most need.

The precision relief project has developed and initiated many actions, including the student action, talent action, employment action, bud care action, and the program of care for left behind children. By the end of 2016, the project has sponsored 3.45 million girls, and built 1,489 spring bud schools. As many as 523,000 teenage girls received practical skills training.

The “Safety and Health Library” project was launched in 2008 and has built 436 libraries in impoverished areas.

The CCTF implemented the "Elimination of Infant Anemia" project in 2012, which has raised a total of more than RMB73 million yuan from the public and obtained RMB150 million yuan from central government. It gave out the "infant complementary food package" to more than one million infants and young children in 138 counties of 10 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities.

The "Safety and Health Action" project helped 8,311 children with cerebral palsy, amblyopia, hearing impairment, leukemia, vitiligo, or hemophilia, effectively curbing poverty due to disease.

In May 2014, the nine-year "Constant Love Action" launched a sub-project for children of ethnic groups in Xinjiang. In addition, the "Spring Bud" and "Children's Happy Home" projects have also carried out special actions for children in Xinjiang.

In 2014, the ACWF and CCTF jointly launched the “Children’s Happy Home” project, paying special attention to the mental health of left behind children who separate from their parents for long periods.

In 2015, the CCTF kicked off several poverty relief projects, including the “HELLO Kids”. The projects provided goods for impoverished children and the children affected by natural disasters.

The CCTF’s poverty relief projects have drawn attention from governments. The "Elimination of Infant Anemia" project became the first one financed by the central government. The central government’s lottery welfare fund has decided to allocate annual RMB150 million yuan to the “Children’s Happy Home” project for five years since 2016.

Public welfare theory research to support practices

The CCTF has been exploring the law of development of children charity in China in its practical actions and has made progress. After the 18th CPC Congress, the CCTF increased its research cooperation with renowned universities and scientific research institutions in many fields, such as children charity demands, girl protection, education and development for girls, parenting, and vocational education for girls in rural areas.

Abundant research results of children charity provide China’s charity organizations with scientific guidance to determine their project objectives, content, and approaches, making public welfare projects more effective and helpful.

Overall planning to diversity charity projects for children’s comprehensive development

Modern charity theory and practice tell us that helping the poor is not the full function of charity; caring for the comprehensive development and personality improvement of people is what public welfare organizations should work hard on a long-term basis.

Over the past five years, the CCTF has improved and diversified its charity projects, giving special attention to implementing projects that care for children's mental health, behavior, morality, training, and children's growth environment improvement.

In July 2016, the CCTF organized the "Spring Bud Girls Camp" with 100 Spring Bud girls participating in, which changed its project goal from material assistance to spirit aspiration.

In addition, a series of projects to enable children to acquire safety knowledge and skills to prevent accidental injury were launched since 2010, having covered over 1.3 million children and parents by the end of 2016.

Projects that focused on helping children learn food safety knowledge started in 2016 and has benefited more than 80,000 children. Various projects and activities themed reading books were launched for children in schools and communities with over two million children and parents involved.

Taking a lead in the era of charity by all people

Charity by all society is a distinctive sign of modern charity. People do their part in promoting social justice through boosting modern public interest. Online crowd funding for public welfare projects has developed into a popular method the public take to do charity as the Internet booms.

In 2016, China promulgated its first version of“Charity law" , allowing non-public foundations to conduct public offering through cooperation with public foundations. A large number of social NGOs thus release their huge energy in promoting public welfare.

The CCTF secretary-general Zhu Xisheng said crowd funding is like raising popularity. A senior professional organization, the CCTF has to well understand the Internet's great impetus to the era of charity by all people. “We need to take a lead to push forward China’s children charity cause.”

In 2016, the "Spring Bud" project alone received donation from more than 1.91 million people online, raising RMB7.52 million yuan.

During the "September 9th Public Welfare Day" activity in 2017, the CCTF launched 355 online public welfare projects in partnership with 260 social NGOs, raising more than RMB87 million yuan and having a total of 710,000 people taking part in.

The annual "September 9th Public Welfare Day" activity was initiated in 2015 by the Tencent public welfare teaming up with hundreds of public welfare organizations, enterprises, celebrities, top creative communication agencies.

The proportion of personal donation kept rising to account for 17 percent of total money raised in 2016 from 13.6 percent in 2015, and the figure is expected to go up again this year.

Brand soft strength to increase public trust

The CCTF has had a wide range of influential charity projects such as "Spring Bud" project, "Safety and Health" project, and "Constant Love Action". As these projects expand and develop, the CCTF has established a cluster of reputable brand-names of children welfare projects on children education development, children's health, and care of special children.

Over the past five years, the CCTF has been working on to make itself known by all walks of life through effective public communication, raising attention, understanding, recognition and adhesion from the society.

In addition to cooperating with the traditional media outlets, the CCTF has built its own communication system, including the official website, journals, microblog, and WeChat account. It promoted public welfare activities with hot social topics. The Fund’s has 78 million visits and more than 20 million video clicks on microblog.

As a public trustee of all donors, the CCTF makes efforts to increase public credibility by improving its management system, including project whole process control, project review, third party assessment, information disclosure, and giving feedback to donors.