Taking Action to Protect Environment

I participated in discussions about environmental protection in September 1995, while I attended the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. That was the first time I had ever participated in such discussions.

I was impressed by Mei Ng, Director of the Hong Kong branch of Friends of the Earth International, who gave a speech during the NGO Forum on Women, Beijing '95. Ng, who had hung aluminum cans, waste newspaper and plastic bottles and bags on her body, told the forum, 'The deterioration of the environment has adversely influenced the lives of many Chinese, including women … However, many people have not realized the importance of environmental protection.'

Ng encouraged the participants to do more to protect the environment. Inspired by her comments, I felt obliged to do something to help improve the environment. I began organizing volunteers — including mothers, government officials and university students — to encourage women to promote environmental protection in China.

With support from Shaanxi Provincial Environmental Protection Department and Shaanxi Women's Federation, my colleagues and I in 1997 established Shaanxi Volunteer Mothers' Association. I believed the association's volunteers would help raise mothers' awareness about the importance of environmental protection, and the women would teach their family members how to better protect environment.

The association made donations, from money collected from organizations and people across the country, to help farmers in Shaanxi plant trees in the desert, to prevent the wind from blowing away the shifting sand.

At the end of 2006, I retired from Shaanxi Women's Federation, and began working full time for the association. By the end of last year, the association had spent more than 15.1 million yuan (U.S. $2.40 million) to implement 43 projects, to help Shaanxi's rural women cadres improve their ability to protect environment. The cadres encouraged rural families to use marsh gas to produce pollution-free fruit, and to develop water-saving irrigation technologies.

(Women of China)