Recently, China Children and Teenagers' Fund — New China's first national public-raising foundation — has released a series of short videos to take a retrospective view of its 40-year-long devotion to a wide range of fields — from helping youngsters to grow up healthy to assisting "left-behind" children.

As part of the short video project, one episode, titled The buds sprout in spring: Helping girls to realize their dreams highlights the fund's long-running Chun Lei (buds in spring) Charity Plan, which, since its launch in 1989, has assisted more than 3.86 million girls from poverty-stricken families return to school.

In the short, three women who once benefited from the plan recall their life-altering experiences. Respectively, one is now a doctor in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, one is a Turkey-educated teacher from rural Qinghai Province and the third is college student from a far-flung area in Guizhou Province.

Additionally, the CCTF also highlights its care for, and assistance offered to, some special groups, including "left-behind" children, referring to those who are raised by their elderly relatives when their parents leave to find work in big cities; disabled children and orphans; and children whose families are affected by natural disasters and emergencies.

Latest available figures show the fund has, in total, donated 140 million yuan ($21.97 million) to build 1,404 childcare centers — which mostly cater to "left-behind" children, helping them to obtain a happy and healthy childhood — in rural China, benefiting a total of around 800,000 children.

(Source: chinadaily.com.cn)