“We’re going to have a music classroom!” In June 2018, such a good news made children in Miaomiaohu village, Pingluo county, Shizuishan, Ningxia cheerful. Five months later, the children were one step closer to their music dreams as they worked their ways onto the stage of the “Great Music Dream Achievement Show”. All these cannot leave without the “Happy Home for Children” in the village.

Miaomiaohu village is an ecological migrant village built during the 12th Five-Year Plan period of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. Over 7,000 villagers have been relocated from Xiji county, Guyuan, Ningxia, a key poverty-stricken county where the average annual income was less than 3,000 yuan. There were 3,756 poor households in the village, accounting for 53 percent of the total population; children under 14 years old account for 28.8 percent of the total number of the village. Most of their parents are farmers or migrant workers, and most of them are semi-literate. Many children have problems such as lack of education in school, lack of help in life, lack of family affection, lack of balance in psychology and lack of security.

With the support of the Women's Federation of the autonomous region and the people’s government of Pingluo county, the “Happy Home for Children” program of CCTF was established in Miaomiaohu village in May 2016. The village committee used an office room with an area of 40 square meters as a special place, and CCTF provided 25,325 books, educational toys, sports equipment, stationery, musical instruments and other equipment worth 100,000 yuan. The chairman of the village Women’s Federation served as the administrator of the “Happy Home of Children”, and established systems such as the registration of left-behind children, the contact between parents, the pairing of missing children and the education responsibility of children management, so as to promote the “Happy Home for Children”to better help children grow up healthily and happily.

 

Under the active coordination of Women’s Federation at all levels, the staff members of all pairs of supporting units took turns to serve as counselors in the “Happy Home for Children” of Miaomiaohu village, providing all-round and multi-level guidance for children in psychology, study, sports and other aspects. Teachers from Miaomiaohu Primary School and kindergarten also participated in the activities to ensure the implementation of the activities.

 

 

Although the activity sites and equipment have been gradually improved, many education activities were difficult to carry out due to the lack of professional teachers. Therefore, the county Women’s Federation tried its best to find teachers who can provide more professional knowledge for children and gradually make up for the deficiency in the implementation of “Happy Home for Children”. On June 3 this year, “Music Public Classroom” sponsored by music broadcasting in Ningxia went into the “Happy Home for Children” of Miaomiaohu village. It not only donated African drums, ukulele, harmonica and other instruments, but also brought professional teaching to children. Volunteer teachers insisted on coming here every month to teach children about vocal music and various instruments. At the end of November, the children stepped on the stage of their first dream in life, and handed in satisfactory answers for their music study in the past six months.

 

 

Although the performance on the stage lasted only a few minutes, the children were very satisfied. As the brothers Hai Jianhua and Hai Jiahua said, “We all like singing, and we also want to play the piano, learn ukulele and play the harmonica, but we don’t have teachers or  instruments in school. Our father worked on the construction site. He was injured some time ago and had no money to buy us musical instruments. We couldn’t imagine that this year the Happy Home for Children can bring us teachers not only taught us to sing, play ukulele and African drum, but also brought us so many musical instruments”.

 

On the way home from the performance, the children with high expectations kept asking, “when can we come to Yinchuan to perform again?”“My ukulele is off again!”“Teacher, when will you come and visit us again?”...

 

Because of the “Happy Home for Children”, children have added a place for learning activities outside the school. The small happy world enriched children’s lives, helped them improve their interpersonal skills, and made them feel the warmth of the Party, government and caring people in society.