Village Children's Fund

•••Background

VCF is a volunteer Non-Government Organization whose core mission is to provide educational support and expand educational opportunites to the children of the Guizhou province in China through financing and building of schools. Simply put, we are involved with “Building Schools and Changing Lives”.

VCF was founded in 2004 by a team of Silicon Valley veterans and is managed entirely by volunteers. Our funding initiatives are directed towards corporate sponsorship as well as private donations.

We strive to run a highly efficient organization and maintain maximum conversion of donations into actual school buildings and supplies. For our first school project we were able to convert 100% of the donated funds into construction materials that resulted in an entirely new and completed school.

Additionally, VCF places a high value on preservation of the fragile indigenous culture of remote villages we target. Our goal is to provide financial support and to stimulate construction of new school facilities while minimizing the sociological and anthropological impact on the target populations.

•••Guizhou Facts

There are many areas in rural China that are in dire need of educational assistance. Guizhou province is one of the poorest regions within China with one of the highest levels of poverty, illiteracy and crumbling infrastructure. VCF surveyed and researched this area and compiled some of these notable characteristics of the region:

•-•The terrain is mountainous. The soil is rocky. The weather is primarily cold and foggy. As a result, only 3% of the land is farmable, and crop yields for this agricultural economy are so low that farm families can barely feed themselves.

•-•Despite government subsidies, an estimated 40% of school-aged children do not attend school because their families cannot afford the fees for books, supplies, dorm costs, etc.

•-•Annual family income averages less than $80 USD per year. Yet the average education cost for a grade school student is $50 USD per year! Therefore school fees are the #1 expense for village families, ahead of housing and retirement. To make matters worse, school fees can increase by as much as 25% in a single year!

•-•The existing school facilities are simple crumbling structures without heat, glass in the window openings nor electric lighting. Some students need to walk up to four miles to get to school. As many as 50% of the students in some regions cannot even attend school since there is not enough classroom space for all the students.

•• VCF History

January 2004 The Village Children’s Fund was founded.

March 2004 Guizhou province is surveyed by VCF and selected as the initial target region. VCF's mission of building schools as our method of changing lives is established.

May 2004 Wistron Corporation initiated a company-wide fundraising effort to become the first VCF corporate sponsor. With their donation VCF is able to build the first school in the village of La You, in Guizhou. Flextronics donated six computers for VCF to apply to the villages of the Guizhou province.

August 2004 Ground is broken for first school building project at La You. VCF obtains 501(c)(3) tax ID.

April 2005 La You School construction completed.

April 2006 200 Computers are donated by Microsoft, Flextronix and Wistron to villages in Doumen, Guangdong and Sandu, Guizhou.

November 2006 Deng Guan in Sandu becomes the second VCF school to be funded.

Present & Future Plan to survey, identify and build at least one school each year. Organize funding efforts to target corporate sponsorship and partnerships and private donations through continuous fundraising efforts in North America and Asia.

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