Camps bring hope for kids left home alone
By Echo Wang |
June 30, 2010, Wednesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
SOUTHERN China's Guangdong Province are building education camps in 3,409 villages for more than 1 million children left at home by their migrant worker parents.
The project, called "Hope Families," began in April after a growing awareness of the problems that could arise from families living apart, the Guangdong-based Nanfang Daily reported yesterday.
Nine-year-old Zhang Hujun was born in Guangzhou City, where her parents worked. But she was sent back to the family's original home in Meizhou Village to live with her grandparents because her parents could not afford her education in Guangzhou.
Her grandparents are in their 80s and speaking a dialect Zhang can't understand.
Zhang can't communicate with anybody in Meizhou and the newspaper report said she abandoned her favorite cartoon drawing and destroyed all her work because "nobody wanted to see them."
A lack of love and care can seriously distort a child's personality, said psychologist He Rihui.
Guangdong has long been an economic powerhouse but the province has a huge income gap and more than half the working population in poorer areas live away from their home towns, the report said.
Li Yawen, headmaster of a primary school in Guangqiao Township, said over a third of his students were either alone at home or living with grandparents.
Most were more withdrawn than their peers, got worse grades, were badly behaved and poor communicators.
Research by Guangzhou University shows that more than 80 percent of Guangdong's prison inmates had been left at home by their migrant worker parents when they were children.
The project, called "Hope Families," began in April after a growing awareness of the problems that could arise from families living apart, the Guangdong-based Nanfang Daily reported yesterday.
Nine-year-old Zhang Hujun was born in Guangzhou City, where her parents worked. But she was sent back to the family's original home in Meizhou Village to live with her grandparents because her parents could not afford her education in Guangzhou.
Her grandparents are in their 80s and speaking a dialect Zhang can't understand.
Zhang can't communicate with anybody in Meizhou and the newspaper report said she abandoned her favorite cartoon drawing and destroyed all her work because "nobody wanted to see them."
A lack of love and care can seriously distort a child's personality, said psychologist He Rihui.
Guangdong has long been an economic powerhouse but the province has a huge income gap and more than half the working population in poorer areas live away from their home towns, the report said.
Li Yawen, headmaster of a primary school in Guangqiao Township, said over a third of his students were either alone at home or living with grandparents.
Most were more withdrawn than their peers, got worse grades, were badly behaved and poor communicators.
Research by Guangzhou University shows that more than 80 percent of Guangdong's prison inmates had been left at home by their migrant worker parents when they were children.
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