BRAVE: A young girl slides across the river on her way to school (LI MINLAN)

Pitiful classrooms

This story is the epitome of the backward education conditions in impoverished regions in China.

"Owing to the underdeveloped economy in western regions, the primary schools there are urgently in need of teachers and teaching facilities," Li Minlan, a volunteer who has been working for Bansheng Primary School in Dahua Yao Autonomous Prefecture in southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region since 2008, told ChinAfrica.

According to her, mostß of the students in the prefecture are studying in pitiful surroundings. A classroom of no more than 40 square meters accommodates 60-80 students ranging from the first to sixth grade, the desks are usually 30-40 years old and students must spend two to three hours on road every day.

"In developed regions in east China, you can see excellent education conditions and quality. Children have a lot of choices of after-school classes in addition to their normal school education," said Li. "But here, you just see a totally different world."

Government help

"The Central Government is aware of the gap in education between the east and the west, and has launched programs to narrow the gap," said Tan Songhua, Executive Vice President of the Chinese Society of Education, in an interview with Xinhua News Agency.

Starting 2001, China launched the program of exempting the tuition fees and extras for primary school and junior middle school students from impoverished families in rural areas, and compensating their living expenses. In 2007, the program covered all the impoverished families in rural areas throughout China.

According to the Ministry of Education, a qualified primary school student can get a subsidy of 750 yuan ($115.56) a year from the program, and a junior middle school student 1,000 yuan ($154.08). For this program, the Central Government invested 5.7 billion yuan ($878.27 million) in 2010, benefiting more than 12 million students in central and west China.

Project Hope is a Chinese public service project organized by the China Youth Development Foundation and the Communist Youth League (CYL) Central Committee, aiming to finance schools in poverty-stricken rural areas of China. Initiated on October 30, 1989, it also finances educational facilities and improves teachers' quality in impoverished regions.

Financing to construct primary schools and assist impoverished students are the major tasks of the project. Sources from its website show that for more than 20 years since its establishment, it has built more than 15,000 primary schools, more than 14,000 school libraries and helped train more than 56,000 primary school teachers in rural areas. At least 80 percent of the donated schools are in west, central and northeast China.

On March 9 this year, Project Hope reached Africa and built a primary school to Msoga Village of Bagamoyo in Tanzania.