Project on Assistance to Earthquake Orphans in Aba Tibetan Area

Project on Assistance to Earthquake Orphans in Aba Tibetan Area

Supported by Buddhist NGO Network (BNN), China Association for NGO Cooperation (CANGO) successfully completed the project on Assistance to Earthquake Orphans in Aba Tibetan Area. Aba Prefecture Children Welfare Center (APCWC) was the beneficiary organization of this project. With BNN financial support and implemented by CANGO, APCWC purchased kitchen equipments and dining facilities for the newly rebuilt welfare center which was destroyed in Wenchuan Earthquake 2008. Life quality has highly improved through new dining condition for the orphans.

Aba PrefectureChildrenWelfareCenter was first founded in 1950. It is now located in Fengyi village, Mao county, Aba prefecture, Sichuan province, registered with Ministry of Civil Affairs of Aba prefecture. Aba prefecture is the second largest Tibetan area within SichuanProvince and the main area for Qiang ethnic minority in China. It is estimated that there are nearly 900 orphans in Aba prefecture and since APCWC is the only state-owned welfare center within the prefecture, it undertakes the responsibility of adopting orphans and physically challenged children, and taking care of abandoned babies throughout all 13 counties.

APCWC previous dining condition was in a bad condition and kitchen equipments were not qualified, which affected the orphans health to a large extent. In order to provide better service to orphans and to prepare adopting more orphans after Wenchuan Earthquake APCWC planed to seek financial help to equip the dining facilities appropriately as part of its reconstruction work.

With careful investigation and preparation, a meeting for inviting public bidding was held in ChengduCity on August 24^th, 2009. And a sale contract for kitchen equipment was made between APCWC and Sichuan Huijian Hotel Facility Com, Ltd. APCWC reopened on 18^th December, 2009. After debugging and installation, commissioning operation and security test had been carried on for 2 months while those equipments were finally put into use in the end of January 2010.

The number of orphans had increased from 38 to 87 at the end of project time,, and there will be around 150 orphans at the end of 2010. Dining condition has been improved and safer and cleaner food can be provided. At the same time it is estimated by APCWC that new kitchen equipments could almost help saving the welfare center 100,000 RMB Yuan per year on energy costs.