NOVEMBER 2018 businesstraveller.comONLINE AUCTION
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CHARITY
FOR MORE THAN A DECADE BUSINESS
TRAVELLER ASIAPACIFIC has been proud to
work alongside the Chi Heng Foundation (CHF) in
bringing together our many partners in the hotel and
airline industries to make a real difference to the lives of
thousands of young people in China. As we enter our
13th year of association with CHF we remain truly humbled
by the efforts of the foundation’s staff and volunteers,
whose work deserves our utmost admiration and respect.
CHF’s long-running commitment to providing
educational sponsorship and psychosocial support to
AIDS-impacted children in China, from primary school
through to university, has remained strong over the past
16 years. Despite the challenges involved in bringing aid
to a large number of students spread over a vast geographic
area, CHF ensures that all funds are distributed directly
by its own staff and volunteers rather than intermediaries,
ensuring quality and continuity within the programme.
To date, the foundation has cumulatively sponsored
more than 23,000 students from AIDS-affected families,
and since 2002 more than 2,500 have graduated from
universities. CHF is the largest and longest running
nongovernmental operation in China providing
comprehensive assistance to AIDS-impacted children.
Alongside formal education, CHF also helps to provide
children with vocational training as well as running
psychosocial programmes, including home visits, art
counselling , summer camps, memory book projects and
other school-based activities. Experience has shown that
these measures provide a positive impact on the students’
academic performance and mental health.
Many of CHF’s efforts have also gone into long-term
development projects including building more than 25
reading rooms in China this year, 14 of which were built
with the support of Business Traveller and its readers.
These reading rooms provide much-needed reading
materials as well as serving as a meeting point and location
for staff and volunteers to provide extracurricular activities
and companionship to children in diverse areas of rural
China. Continuous funding of these and other meaningful
programmes, along with educational support, is critical in
alleviating the suffering of thousands of innocent children,
and providing the chance of a bright future for all.