Chinese, Belgian girls jointly launch campaign to help African children

Compassion knows no national boundary -- that is the message Yan Rui and Alison Kaneza wanted to deliver when the two young women from different countries and backgrounds worked together to launch a charity campaign for African children.

A charity dinner was held here Saturday as the debut event of iCompassion, a non-profit organization co-established by Yan and Kaneza, with the participation of more than 100 guests.

The event aimed to raise money for children who live in an orphanage in Kigali, capital city of Rwanda, by collecting donations from the guests and auctioning African contemporary paintings.

A heart-warming documentary was premiered at the event to show the lives and struggles of these children, calling for more international support to improve their education and livelihood.

From the western Chinese city of Urumqi, Yan has studied and worked in China, the United States, France, Hungary, Switzerland and Belgium. She is also a brave colon cancer survivor.

"Cancer made me learn to live for the moment and try to help and do something good in this beautiful world," the 25 year old told Xinhua.

In Brussels, Yan teamed up with peer Kaneza, a Belgian girl of Burundian origin, to create iCompassion aiming to help vulnerable children and youth in the less developed part of the world through concrete actions.

Born to a well-off family in Burundi, Kaneza realized at a very young age that there were poor people around her.

"I used to steal food from my mother's kitchen and brought it to those in need," Kaneza recalled. As she grew up and moved abroad, she stayed in touch with many children in difficult situations and constantly went back to visit them.

Yan and Kaneza came up with a somehow girlish idea to get the public involved in their mission. They are giving out plastic wrist bands which people can wear as a reminder for showing compassion on a daily basis.

"Every morning you can put on the wrist band, and when you do something compassionate during the day, you can turn it over to a different color," Kaneza explained.

"I believe that the objective of our organization is my own mission -- to put an action in daily life, practice it and share it with others and make this world a better place for living," Yan added. Endi