RCEF Rural Library for Guan Ai School (关爱小学图书室资助)

Guan Ai needs to build a new school library. The old school library had to be taken over for use as a classroom because other buildings were deemed unsafe for use. The current facilities in are limited, old and crumbling. The money will be used to buy the bricks needed for the new library and reading room.

Guan Ai is a not-for-profit innovative boarding school that serves 185 students from a dozen villages in northern China Its facilities are cramped and crumbling.but its teachers are young and energetic. The school is a pioneer in developing new, student-centered teaching methods aimed at high academic quality and well-rounded development.

The new library will be a child-friendly space open to 185 children from grades one through six. They can check out books at regular times each week. There is time scheduled into each day for free extracurricular reading and the school already has hundreds of carefully chosen children's books. Fostering a love of reading is esential for rural children because it opens the door to worlds of knowledge they would otherwise be isolated from, and improves their creativity and skills of expression. Already, teachers have seen students who were unable to sit still and read one book transform into voracious book worms. It has also improved the academic performance of students in Chinese class, especially in essay writing.

The Rural China Education Foundation staff have been based year-round at Guan Ai School since 2007, working side-by-side with the teachers. RCEF's role is to act as a "consultant" to the school in education reform. This includes supporting the teachers in teaching reforms as well as the principals in operationas management so that resources and finances are transparent and well-documented.