Four months ago, the Rotaract Club of Shanghai started a projected with the goal to provide food for less fortunate children in the remote provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi. Research had shown that a lack of nutrition influenced their performance in class, which we wanted to avoid by providing them with one egg every morning. 100 RMB is enough to provide one egg on a daily basis throughout a whole semester and it might even change their whole life.

At first, we had nothing apart from a great idea and concept, but now four months later, after hours of efforts it has become one of our most successful projects ever! Last sunday on April 15th, the Rotaract Club of Shanghai together with numerous volunteers participated in te "new balance Jinqiao 8k" run to raise funds for this project through personal and corporate sponsorships.

With all the help, we were able to collect more than 20.000 RMB, which will gives over 200 children a chance for better life. Additionally, half of a 2500 USD grant from Edelman awarded to the Rotaract Club of Shanghai will help another 80 students. Furthermore we were able to share our project and our club with several thousand people all of the China through and interview on the tv channel ICS and have raised international awareness when participating in the "new balance Jinqiao 8k" last sunday. Our members Fabian Tiefenbacher and Jason Born are in the interview.

At this point, we would like to thank all of our individual sponsors, Corporate sponsors such as the Huaqiao Foundation, Yunio, Avia-Tek and URBN Hotels for the generous donations and everyone involved in this project for their great contribution.

We are now supervising the distribution of the donations and are planning on visiting one of the targeted schools.

Please kindly refer to the links for photos and videos of the event.

Pre-event Presentation on Prezi: Here

Photo's of the event on Facebook: Here

ICS Report of the run on YouTube: Here

Thank you letter from Fabian Tiefenbacher: Here

Dear Friends and Sponsors,

It is with great pleasure that I write to you to thank you for your contributions and to provide you with an overview of the success of the Rotaract Clothing Drive & Happy Feet Project.

Two months ago, we learned from a CCTV  report that students at Shiliuping School, Xiangxi Autonomous Region, Hunan Province,  spend an average of two hours in wet shoes along rough mountain roads to get to school each day. To bring warmth and joy to the kids, we launched the Rotaract Clothing Drive & Happy Feet Project,  aimed at collecting clothing and shoes for the 1,052 elementary school students and 528 middle school students at Shiliuping School.

Over the past two months, we’ve collected a total of 12,840  items in donations,  in addition to 333 pairs of new shoes purchased by corporate sponsors and personal cash donations. We would not have achieved this great feat without your help.

On April 7, the Rotaract Club of Shanghai, with volunteers from Wuhan University and Messer, visited Shiliuping School. We distributed the shoes and clothing to the needy children, passing on the love of all the donors. We also visited the families of some of the students. Their poverty and the difficulty of their situation deeply shocked us, but we were glad to see that we were able to bring them happiness through our efforts.

Half of a USD 2,500 Edelman grant awarded to Rotaract Club of Shanghai will also be used to provide additional help to the poverty-stricken students we visited.

I thank you once again for sponsoring the project and helping us make a positive change in so many lives.