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At Da Zhai Middle School in Yunxian County, Yunnan we are a cross-cultural team of 6 dedicated teaching fellows recruited from undergraduate and graduate schools from across China and the United States to work for the NGO Teach For China. We teach History, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Computer Science, and English to 837 seventh, eighth, and ninth graders at our school, but our work here extends far beyond the classroom. Our school is located in mountainous terrain typical of rural Yunnan, and devoted students lacking the means or the funds for transportation hike as long as three to four hours every weekend to attend class.
For many of our students, who lack the money to buy backpacks, winter jackets, or even essential school items like practice books, the 10 dollars needed to purchase a new pair of glasses is impossibly far away. In classrooms lacking multimedia equipment and filled with 50 to 60 students, an inablity to read the blackboard severly impacts their ability to succeed in class.
In the seventh grade alone, over 35% of students said that they had difficulty reading the board in class, yet only 7 students out of a total of 333 had been able to obtain glasses. This is why we have teamed up with Education in Sight. It is our goal to provide the entire Middle School with eye exams and glasses, if needed, giving them the tools they need to move one step closer to leveling the playing field and succeeding in China's highly competitive academic system.
Our students are all very excited about the possibility of owning a pair of glasses for the first time, and any contribution you can make would be, in many ways, transformational. Thank you in advance for your support.
Sincerely,
Bryan Dooley and 汤乐思 (Da Zhai Middle School TFC Teaching Fellows)
3/1/2012 - We've just passed $10,000 and are over halfway to our final goal! Thank you so much for helping us reach this amazing milestone!
1/27/2012 - Our last group of schools have joined the campaign, and our final goal is in! This year, we are aiming to support 12 schools of rural China through our Fundly campaign, and 5 KIPP regions, with the potential to provide eye exams for over 10,000 students. To meet this need, we are putting up a final Fundly goal of $20,000!
1/10/2013 - We've just added several new schools to our campaign. Welcome KIPP schools and He Liu Elementary School! As a response to these new additions, we've increased our goal to $8,000!
One of the most important challenges in the field of education is also one of its most overlooked--correcting students’ eyesight in low-income communities. According to studies performed by The World Bank, as many as 20% of children in developing countries and students in low-income American communities suffer from poor eyesight. Education in Sight is working to solve this.
Education in Sight strives to improve education in the U.S. and China through conducting eye examinations and providing free eyeglasses to under-privileged students in U.S. cities and low-income Chinese towns. We partner with local eye clinics to deliver eye examinations at our partners schools, and work with doctors and teachers to deliver the glasses directly to the students at their schools. We also work to educate students, parents, and teachers about the benefits of glasses, and the necessity of proper eye care. The glasses provided by Education In Sight result in students' heightened ability to follow and participate in class and as a result, to achieve higher in the classroom.
At the core of Education in Sight is a firm commitment to education. Composed of leaders from both the U.S. and China, we strive to build cross-cultural relationships between students in the U.S. and abroad. Through pen-pal programs, video conferencing, and online communication, students from the U.S. and China learn about the cultures and lives of their counterparts in other countries, thus fostering a mutual understanding and friendship between Chinese and American youth.
For more information on all aspects of our organization, visit http://www.education-in-sight.org/.
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