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Xinlong Village lies near Jiulong Town, around 100 kilometres from the epicentre of the earthquake. In March 2009, the Beijing Rural Women’s Cultural Development Centre founded the Xinlong Village Mutual Aid Centre (XMAC; Chinese name: 九龙镇新龙村妇女互助中心) to develop the independence and self-sufficiency of local women through career education and literacy. When SQR visited the village last month, Liu Daqing, the Beijing Centre’s representative in Xinlong, emphasised the objectives of nurturing the career skills of women and its positive impact on the security of their families.
To date XMAC’s community projects have focused mainly on agricultural skills development. In 2009, they funded the purchase of rabbits and pig-fodder for the raising of livestock. With Liu Daqing’s help, the three full-time staff of XMAC established a group-purchasing system and acquired pigs for farming as well. With agricultural training organised by Ms. Liu’s team, the XMAC participants successfully raised, further bred and sold their livestock.
Other 2009 XMAC projects included embroidery training. In a building next to the Mutual Aid Centre, fifteen women skillfully hand-embroider cloth for sale. Such projects have strengthened the independence and self-sufficiency of women in the community. The Xinlong female participants have proudly supported their families through the profits of their livestock and embroidered goods.
To help cover its administration costs, the Beijing Centre helped XMAC to set up a small supermarket in Xinlong, which also houses a library designed to develop literacy levels amongst the women of the village. The books are divided roughly into two categories: reference material on agricultural practices, and novels. XMAC plans to expand its library collection in 2010 to include more agricultural resources and to further encourage literacy among Xinlong women. Liu Daqing commented, “Many women here cannot read Chinese characters or even write their name.” Prior to the end of the Beijing Centre’s incubation services in March 2010, she will help train a librarian to manage the collection. XMAC has also begun organising performing arts shows to give the women an outlet for their creativity, which could also motivate the goals of the literacy campaign through staging plays.
XMAC is currently looking to partner with a local organisation that can provide business and management training (to improve the supermarket’s operations) as well as direct funding for its library expansion and economic projects. The profits from the XMAC supermarket, run by a local couple out of the XMAC office, cover annual administration expenses, but are not enough to sustain the organisation’s upcoming projects. XMAC director Liu Minghui is confident that, based on last year’s successes and the enthusiasm of its members, the Xinlong Village Mutual Aid Centre will continue to grow and better serve the women of the village throughout 2010 and beyond.
From the little I’ve read on this, studies show that if women are educated and economically able/active, then communities do well. I’ve tried to use this evidence to justify my belief that I should stay at home eating chocolate while my wife goes out to work, but apparently the studies do not cover this.
Any chance of a map reference (Google map?) to show where they are?
This is another excellent article based on long-term commitment and hard work. That sounds terribly worthy, but it’s true.
As with many quake-affected villages in Sichuan, Xinlong is not appearing on any online maps that I’ve seen. The supermarket/library is based on the nearest town, Jiulong.