THE southeast part of Guizhou Province in southern China, as a colony for the Dong, Yao and Miao minorities, embraces many distinctive cultures, such as the country's only tribe of musketeers and the Dong minority people's polyphonic choir-singing known as Kam Grand Choir. Seven years ago, six hikers visited the mysterious place, noticing poverty was threatening its people and undermining its culture. They volunteered to help, forming a charity organization which now has more than 4,000 members.

It was during a seven-day trip in 2004, when Li Guangshou and five other hikers traveled to southeast Guizhou as a group. These hikers are from Hangzhou, Beijing and Guangzhou in Guangdong Province.

They were intending to hike the mountains, experience the local cultures and in the case of Li, a journalist from Beijing, make some social observations.

Their destination was the wondrous landscapes of Moon Mountain area, home to Basha, China's last tribe of musketeers.

When they passed Datang Village in the mountainous area, where people lived a very simple life of bartering, the story began. As soon as the group arrived, they learned that a newborn baby was going to die if he couldn't be sent to a hospital.

The boy, surnamed Wu, was prematurely born and suffering a transtracheal blockage. It is a typical symptom among newborns, but in the poor village it was life threatening as both the village's only clinic and the county-level hospital one-hour drive from the village lacked appropriate equipment to treat the condition.

He had to be delivered to the town-level hospital, a two-hour drive from the village, said the physician in the clinic.

Journalist Li called for help from a local official who sent his own car to the village to pick up the boy, and Liu Zhijie, another hiker who came from a family of doctors helped the physician to take care of the baby, while others persuaded the boy's family to send the boy to hospital. His family was worrying about the medical costs, plus according to the local custom, if a newborn died out of the village, his body could only be buried at the place where he passed away - the family wanted to keep the boy's body if he couldn't survive.

After hours, they eventually got a car and convinced the family. Nevertheless, the boy's life only lasted another eight hours. Because of the delay, Wu passed away despite reaching the hospital.

The incident had the hikers immersed in thought.

The village's poverty had led to the unequipped clinic, adverse transportation and ignorant customs, they analyzed.

But little Wu's death was not an individual case. Over the years, many villagers there have died from minor diseases because they were out of reach of a suitably equipped hospital. And before they had the clinic, their "doctors" were wizards.

The hikers were determined to help. Li's detailed reporting was published by several leading media outlets in China.

The reporting attracted donations of tens of thousands yuan for the village's clinic and its counterparts in southeast Guizhou, which are now better equipped today.

After this success, the hikers moved on. "The root of poverty is the lack of education," Li and his friends discovered.

After six months of preparation, the six hikers founded Ninth World Public Welfare Club in 2005, with a mission to improving the levels of education in southeast Guizhou.

Its name Ninth World was given by a local official who said, "China is the third world of the Earth, Guizhou is the third world of the country, while Moon Mountain area is the third world of Guizhou, and the ninth world of the planet."

Ninth World Public Welfare Club's headquarters are located in Hangzhou due to three of the founding members being from the city, and it also has branches in Beijing and Guangzhou. Yang Qi, one of the hikers, became thefirst president.

The club's first project was to call for people in cities to pair with kids in Moon Mountain area, the activity later spread to the whole southeast Guizhou. So far, more than 800 kids have been paired.

As the club focuses on education it has many teachers as volunteers, and during the 2005 summer vacation, the club gathered a dozen volunteer teachers to run a summer camp in Moon Mountain area, teaching children math, Chinese and art.

Zhuge Qi, a retired math teacher from Hangzhou, was among the first batch of volunteer teachers who taught at Wuniu Primary School in Yongli County. As he recalls, it was more difficult than he thought it would be.

"The isolated village was so poor that it had no TV, no newspaper, no radio," recalls Zhuge. "Once an old man had a ham sausage I gave him, a very common snack, but he told me it was the most delicious he had ever had in his life.

"And as we expected, the education level of the rural area was far from that of cities, but kids there were so eager to learn," said Zhuge. "I, such an old man, was impressed by them and learned much from them in those two months."

The summer camp became a regular program of the club that has run for six years, which also pushed the formation of another regular program of establishing reading rooms in local schools. Currently, the club has founded reading rooms for 142 schools, each of them has a collection of 1,200 books on average.

And since 2009 the club has organized volunteer teachers graduating from normal universities to educate local teachers.

"Summer camp only lasts for two months each year, while educating teachers has a much far-flung influence," says Zheng Yiling, the current president of the club.

Initially, the club brought local teachers to Hangzhou for training, and took teachers from normal universities in Zhejiang Province to Guizhou to train.

But "as training always last for weeks, the program costs a lot," says Zheng. "Since this year, the club invested 1.6 million yuan (US$248,406) and established a house in Guizhou as a training base so volunteers can stay there and educate local teachers."

Moreover, the club has collected donations nationwide for providing local primary school computers and cameras. Until this year, 106 schools have benefited, each of them has one computer and one camera.

Apart from educating local teachers and children, the club noticed the poverty of the rural area was undermining its unique culture.

"Children are reluctant to learn traditional culture, like the Dong minority's polyphonic choir-singing Kam Grand Choir that features over 30 keys, and the Miao minority's embroidery that records Miao people's stories and history on cloth, because they don't think learning that will make them money," says Zheng.

"Only old people still practice those rare cultures, so we invite those old people to give classes, which we call 'second classroom'," says Zheng.

To convince them the culture deserves learning and can make money, the club sells the pupils' embroidery works online (http://shop59264729.taobao.com), with the money going to the producers once sold.