Annie's Charity
Annie Hou has worked for Omeida Language College for more than 10 years now. She now serves as the director of admissions and VIP services. She likes a busy life and feels satisfied seeing my achievements. When she began working at Omeida, she would have called herself a workaholic, and enjoyed her work and the positive feedback from her peers. But after she took the position that she serves in now, she started to have more time to herself on the weekends and began to realize the importance of balancing work and life. She started spending more time enjoying rock climbing, hiking, yoga and meditation. With time, she also began to reflect on the meaning of life. Eventually, she realized the answer is Love, giving love, receiving love and feeling love.
In 2014, She started use her weekends to do something meaningful. She began to visit poor rural villages around Yangshuo to search for children in need. She talked with the headmasters of the schools to find the students with the greatest needs and then went to see the students and their families for herself.
After seeing their desperate needs face to face, she created a financial agreement for the students and schools to join in, with the purpose of providing financial support.
It's now been two years since she began, and now she's currently helping 46 students, most of which are orphans from poor families, or are being cared for by single parents or grandparents. As students renew their agreements and new students are added, the monetary need increases. 200RMB each month is enough to provide a single student with food and school supplies, totaling 2000 RMB each year. Each time she has shared a story online about helping a student, more people contact her wanting to donate, some even offering to directly support a student for an entire year. As she serves as the middleman between the donors and the families, the generosity she has seen has been extremely touching. She hope to see more people giving financially to help these students in the future.
How the charity is helping
Cai Rui Qian, 15, and Cai Ci Jun, 13, cared for by their mother, lost their father unexpectedly. Mom sells rice to afford the eldest sons school materials, and felt that she was unable to go on living that way. But after funding the family for a year and a half, she is full of hope and the brothers are now energetic and cheerful.
Deng Jian Jun, 13 and Deng Jian Xiong, 12, orphan brothers, cared for by their 80-year-old grandfather whose leg severely restricts his mobility. The brothers try hard to study in school, but without encouragement they struggle to improve.
(E Gui) Guang Lin, 16, lost mother to illness, father is disabled and unable to earn enough money to support the family. After beginning to support Guang Lin, his grades improved at school. Recently he competed in a province-wide science contest at took third place. He is now in high school.
Qin Wen Li, 15, and Qin Jia Qiang, 11, are orphans, supported by their frail grandmother after their grandfather passed away. Because their house was leaking rain heavily, an extra sum of money was raised to repair their house. The elder sister is now in high school, while the younger brother is in elementary.
Wang Xue Rong, 16, lost mother to cancer and father to car accident. The family was in debt after treating her mother. Now in high school, Xue Rong has just renewed her funding for another year.
Wu Gui Feng, 14, mother suffers serious mental illness, lost dad after a stroke. She has been taking care of her mother and has not been able to focus on her education, so her grades are low. After beginning to receive support, her outlook on life has grown more positive.
