ACWF Launches Training Project to Lift Rural Women out of Poverty

The All-China Women's Federation (ACWF) has launched a countrywide training project to enable outstanding female key workers to help disadvantaged communities by using their skills and cultivation techniques and lift them out of poverty.

The head of the Department for Women's Development of the ACWF said that one of the original intentions of the training project is to take advantage of the outstanding resources of the National Poverty-Alleviation Demonstration Bases.

Furthermore, the initiative will enable members to make full use of their contribution in skills training and technology promotion to realize poverty alleviation and further increase women's incomes.

The ACWF should focus on heavily poverty-stricken areas and special impoverished groups and deepen women's implementation of poverty alleviation, to better unite and lead the majority of women to play the role of "holding up half of the sky" in this field.

The ACWF aims to closely integrate the reform of the women's federation into the implementation of poverty alleviation, and vigorously promote the further reform of grassroots women's federations in poverty-stricken areas, and make full use of executive committee to guide women to carry out actual poverty-alleviation actions.

One of those who have inspired the project is Long Siqing, part-time vice-president of Hunan Women's Federation in central China's Hunan province. She is also the Party branch secretary of Guchong Village in Huaihua City.

Long is widely considered a competent person to transfer the Party branch into the headquarters for poverty alleviation, said officials.

She has already organized and carried out activities in villages to foster technical talents and encouraged affluent farmers to become members of the CPC (Communist Party of China), and enabled those who are capable of constructing infrastructure to become the defenders of the interests of the masses and the promoters of village-level economic development.

Furthermore, Long has encouraged them to be the disseminators of national policies and practitioners of the Party's missions.

Under her leadership, the village set a good poverty-alleviation example of Party building, industry support and mass power. Now the per capita income of locals there has exceeded over 9,000 yuan.

According to organizers, training 100 principals of national poverty alleviation demonstration bases and 100 officials from women's federations at the county-level in poverty-stricken areas are a work innovation and an effective way to achieve mutual assistance and poverty-alleviation through the leadership of capable individuals.

In 2016, the National Women's Poverty Alleviation Action promotion meeting was held in northwest China’s Gansu Province. In 2017, a special training class of the project was held in Liangshan, southwest China's Sichuan province.

These meetings and classes deployed and promoted the women's federation to systematically participate in poverty alleviation implementation and precisely help women improve their economic circumstances.

Till now, the ACWF has established 336 National Women's Poverty Alleviation Demonstration Bases, and women's federations at all levels have created 6,920 poverty alleviation bases in 832 poverty-stricken counties.

Women have founded more than 300,000 family farms, agritourism sites and professional cooperatives.

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the country has issued a total of 169.88 billion yuan for women's guaranteed microloans and 2.59 million women have enjoyed the economic support, including 131.51 billion yuan for women in the central and western regions, accounting for 77.4 percent of the total loans.

These loans have helped some 1.99 million women with entrepreneurial financial difficulties to realize their dreams of starting a business.

Meanwhile, women in rural areas have also been provided with free gynecological check-ups. By the end of last year, the central government had invested 2.7 billion yuan to conduct free cervical cancer screenings for more than 70 million rural women and conducted breast cancer examination for more than 10 million.

In order to promote the treatment of disadvantaged women, the ACWF won the support of the Central Lottery Public Welfare Fund of the Ministry of Finance in 2011, and established a special fund to subsidize women who meet the conditions for assistance with 10,000 yuan for each person to enable them to receive treatment for cervical cancer or breast cancer.

"Under the strong leadership of the CPC Central Committee with President Xi Jinping as the core, and with the joint efforts of the compatriots of all ethnic groups across the country and the influence exerted by women's federations, women will eventually benefit from the outcomes of the implementation of women's poverty alleviation," said Zhang Qiong, a representative of the trainees.

(Source: Women Voice/Translated and edited by Women of China)