Free Lunch for Children

Project Title: Free Lunch for Children

Project Initiator: Deng Fei, a journalist of Phoenix Weekly Magazine and his friends

Background and Introduction of the Project:

In February, 2011, the China Development Research Foundation released an report about the nutritional status of the students of China's rural areas. The report revealed that the Children in the poor area of the Midwest China are in a serious shortage on the nutritional intake, and that 72 percent of those children are suffering from hungry. According to the report, the average weight of the children of rural areas is 10 kilograms lower than the average weight of the children in cities. The report suggested that the government should take actions to improve the rural students’ nutritional status, for the country and for the people.

In early 2011, When Deng Fei, a journalist of Phoenix Weekly Magazine talked with a volunteer teacher named Xiaoyu from Guizhou Province, he learned that pupils in school of rural areas only had two meals or even one meal a day. Most of them don't have any food for lunch because their home are miles away from the schools and it takes two hours or more to walk home.

Mr. Deng decided to visit her school to find out what’s happening there. When Dengfei and his friends arrived in Guizhou Province, they found out that the situation was even worse. Not only pupils in Xiaoyu’s school, but also many other schools’ students were starving. Starving had become part of those students’ life.

This truth shocked Mr. Deng and his colleagues. He and his friends swore to do something for them.

He posted what he had seen on his mircoblog. At that time he had 50 thousands followers on Weibo. Those posts from Dengfei spread widely within a short time. People were astonished by the miserable conditions of those poverty-stricken pupils in Guizhou province.

Dengfei and some of his friends wanted to raise money for those schools to provide free lunch for their students. But he didn’t know how to set up a legal fund to raise money from society. However, it was lucky that his two friends, Dang Jun and Xiao Longjun provided their help with professional knowledge whole-heartedly.

On April 2rd, 2011, the Free Lunch Fund was founded under China Social Welfare foundation. Every online donation can be checked on the website of FLFC. Each Free Lunch school is required to open up a sina Weibo account and to post their detailed accounting on their Weibo account.

And the volunteers and donators in early stage formed an executive committee consisted of lawyers, white-collars, journalists, professionals etc. Each one of them is in charge of a different part of daily work and volunteer management. Social media played an irreplaceable role for FLFC and for the great change of China.

A year later, FLFC has raised more than 25 million RMB. Students in over 160 schools in remote mountainous areas no longer suffer from hunger. More than 92% of the money we spent went directly to children’s meals.

Contact Information:

The Free Lunch Fund Administration Committee, China Social Welfare Foundation

Tel：010-85114150-600

Fax：010-85114150-600