Spring Bud Girl Continues to Study Thanks to PLA Air Force’s Poverty Relief Efforts
"I like running because I can forget things unhappy when I am running," said Zhang Xiaolei, 12 years old, dreamed of being a long-distance runner.
Zhang Xiaolei went home once a week on the weekend. She is having lunch with her grandparents.
Zhang Xiaolei's home is in Zhongfang Village of Taihe County’s Luoxi Town, Jiangxi Province. The village was so poor that it was one of the villages in Jiangxi Province to get poverty-relief support over the past few years. It has 23 impoverished households, and Zhang Xiaolei’s is one of them.
Zhang Xiaolei’s mother left her when her father died of lymph node cancer In 2014, leaving her to live with her sister, six years older than her, her grandparents, and her uncle who has mental, language, and hearing disabilities and has no working ability.
Xiaolei’s grandpa, 76 years old, has two acres of farmland. He plants rice for the family and the only source of income of the family is the low premium of RMB 240 per person per month and the government’s assistance.
Zhang Xiaolei’s Luoxi Central Elementary School received donations from the PLA Air Force and the China Children and Teenagers’ Fund (CCTF) from 2016. Fortunately, the school has officially become a blue sky spring bud school this year and Xiaolei also received grants and school supplies from the "Blue Sky Spring Buds Project."
Since 1995, the CCTF and the PLA Air Force have implemented the "Blue Sky Spring Buds Project." PLA Air Force officers have donated 140 million yuan from wages and allowances, helping 28,877 children to complete their studies, built 94 schools and 110 "children's happy homes". In addition, it provided 3,910 spring bud school teachers and girls in teens with skill training, improved nutrition for more than 40,000 infants and young children, and helped treat over 1,000 children with congenital heart disease over the past 20 years.
The donation of society is an important support for Zhang Xiaolei to continue her study. "I will work harder to learn, and I will not let those who care about me down," she said.
*Zhang Xiaolei in the text is a pseudonym.