Rural Education Action Program

Not everyone spends relaxing on a beach - See how undergrad student Laura Jonsson spent her's researching language environments in https://reap.fsi.stanford.edu/news/students-field-qa-laura-jonsson

FSI | REAP - Students in the Field: Q&A with Laura Jonsson Laura Jonsson is a Stanford undergraduate student, Class of 2020, majoring in human biology and hoping to minor in education and Middle Eastern literature, languages, and cultural. As a REAP student intern in 2017 Laura traveled to Xi’an, China where she spent three weeks working with families and...

This is exactly why we started researching interventions to help the 7 million people in rural China impacted by these tapeworms! Check out one of our interventions to see what we're doing about it: http://bit.ly/2t3FenY CNN

Teen dies of tapeworm egg infestation in brain An 18-year-old who complained of seizures in the emergency room of an Indian hospital turned out to have parasites in his brain, according to a case study published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Chen's story is why we do what we do. No child should have to drop out of middle school to work to support their family leaving them to face a future of relentless manual labor.

Hopeless: Stuck in China's vicious cycle of poverty Perhaps no story better represents the vicious cycle of poverty in rural China than that of 16-year-old Chen Zhenzhen. Chen gave up her education at the age of 12, after her family could no longer…

Wishing you joy, prosperity, and healthy pigs! See what REAPs doing to keep pigs healthy with our Pigs and Parasites project: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oTZwgmAFRswa_uhcqDXhao8Ha_49eRXt/view?usp=sharing

Wishing you and yours a very happy Chinese New Year!

Don't forget to join Scott Rozelle and SOAR FOUNDATION this weekend for a riveting discussion on rural education in China! See details below

Join REAP's director Scott Rozelle and fellow leading influencers on February 2, 1-5pm PST, at the Forum on Chinese Rural Education hosted by the SOAR FOUNDATION on Stanford campus. No excuses, it's a free event! RSVP here: https://goo.gl/forms/JejZl5NAF5GLnyNf1

Interested in a Summer 2019 internship? Come learn more about the two internships REAP hosts in China at our information session for Stanford students! Snacks provided!

Join REAP's director Scott Rozelle and fellow leading influencers on February 2, 1-5pm PST, at the Forum on Chinese Rural Education hosted by the SOAR FOUNDATION on Stanford campus. No excuses, it's a free event! RSVP here: https://goo.gl/forms/JejZl5NAF5GLnyNf1

In a village where all the parents have left, the ‘left-behind’ children miss out on China's economic miracle On the flip side of China’s economic miracle are the 69 million "left-behind" children of rural families, whose parents are away earning money in distant cities. Solving their problems is key to China's economic future.

Did you know REAP and co-hosted an international conference on early childhood development? Check out our event page to see some pictures of the event that brought together international thought leaders in childhood development: http://ow.ly/lpQP50jVGBD

FSI | REAP - Parenting the Future Rural poor students in China face many obstacles. The ultimate goal of REAP is to help students from poor rural households in China overcome these obstacles ...

Check out the "Ningshan Model" for parenting centers in rural China - government support is a must to impact national policy change, luckily that's exactly what we have - http://ow.ly/8fs850jZaFD

Sending you peace and joy over this holiday season!

Did you know REAP created an online game-based software to help tutor Chinese kids in Math, Chinese, and English? Learn more about on O-CAL project – we're excited to see the effects the program has across one million kids. http://ow.ly/krwq50jVFQR

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"One study found that nearsighted children who wore glasses regularly performed twice as well in school than they would have without." Read more fun facts in this BuzzFeed article highlighting our partner, OneSight, and quoting REAP research.

You Won’t Believe These Surprising Eye Facts Until You See Them With its commitment to bring eye exams and glasses to the one in seven people who need them but have no way to get them, OneSight is aiming to . Find out how you can make a lasting difference here.

For the children of migrant workers who moved to China's urban areas for opportunity, the idea of migrating elsewhere is almost unthinkable. These migrant children view their city as home, but face a new cabal of economic challenges as developers demolish urban villages.

How China’s Urban Demolition Policy Traps Migrant Youths When officials mark an urban village for demolition, it’s often young migrants who pay the price.

"Rural school dropouts often feel relief at getting out of the education system, but they disproportionately end up in low-paid, exploitative jobs."

In urban areas with high numbers of migrant worker children and in underdeveloped rural areas, students are far more likely to dropout or mentally checkout of their studies.

Rural School Dropouts Wake Up to the Harsh Reality of Work Boredom, not poverty, increasingly drives China’s country kids out of compulsory education — and into exploitative forms of labor.

FSI’s Rural Education Action Program (REAP) & Battling Infant Malnutrition
Babies in rural China can sometimes struggle to get adequate nutrition, not because not enough food, but because they aren't eating the right foods at the right age. Ultimately, almost 50% of these rural infants suffer from anemia. Our interns talked with the parents and children to better understand the quality of the these children are getting and educated parents about childhood anemia.
Photo credit: Stanford REAP
To learn more about Stanford REAP & their programs, see: https://stanford.io/2NsOsCL

"While some education experts welcome expanding the rural teaching pool, they say the new policy is unlikely to ease China’s greater educational problem – the widening urban-rural education gap. That is because the program fails to address the staggering inequity in economic well-being that is at the heart of the rural teacher shortage, they say."

Do you think that these formerly-retired teachers will be able to make the difference in China's goal to eliminate poverty?

China sends 10,000 retired teachers back to classroom in rural areas Policy to send ‘outstanding’ educators to schools in the countryside for at least a year is part of government drive to ease poverty in remote areas

More and more Chinese schoolchildren are having to face vision challenges. Our own research has found that the longer students with myopia go without corrective eyeglasses, the more likely they are to drop out of school and fall into poverty.

Short-sightedness among Chinese pupils rising at rapid rates, study finds, as authorities urged to get children outside more Youngsters at increased risk of going blind, say researchers

2.5 billion people worldwide suffer from vision problems with no access to corrective care, but this new study shows how a pair of glasses can make all the difference in reducing poverty and increasing productivity.

You can check out some of REAP's own research on the impact of vision access on our new website: https://reap.fsi.stanford.edu/research/vision_care

PROSPER study published in The Lancet Global Health - Clearly As the first Global Disability Summit takes place, new evidence of how a simple pair of glasses can improve workers’ productivity and reduce poverty is published.

Zecheng is one of our Global Policy interns for this summer! While he's researching food access for rural families, he's also learned how to make wheat naan and grind walnuts.

A Taste of the Other China – FSI Internships – Medium About the author: Zecheng Wang ’21 is a Stanford ungraduate currently working with FSI’s Rural Education Action Program.

E-commerce is bringing opportunity and innovation to China's hinterlands, where drones deliver packages and migrant workers are coming home for work.

How E-Commerce Is Transforming Rural China JD.com is expanding its consumer base with drone delivery and local recruits who can exploit villages’ tight-knit social networks to drum up business.

"Urbanization is often associated with the reduction of poverty due to the lower unemployment rates and higher GDP per capita of China’s most successful cities compared to its countryside."

Despite the move to cities, many people are struggling to find consistent work and fall victim to the other facets of poverty. For China to achieve its 2020 goal of eradicating poverty, a multi-facet approach is necessary.

China’s 2020 Anti-Poverty Project: A Shift from Rural to Urban - BORGEN China’s 2020 anti-poverty project is a government initiative largely characterized by the physical relocation of millions of rural denizens to urban communities.

Corporations are looking towards China's rural areas for development and market opportunities. Village revitalization is a core part of their corporate social responsibility efforts to bring new opportunity to underdeveloped rural areas.

China’s cash-rich property developers go rural for opportunities and political currency Country Garden, Vanke and Evergrande have announced expansion plans in the countryside, which are unlikely to yield quick returns

"China accounts for the biggest share of people with uncorrected eyesight problems, followed by India (477 million), Nigeria (95 million), and Indonesia (90 million)."

Children are the most vulnerable who stand to benefit the most from eyeglasses. Our research has shown that providing those glasses is the single most effective health intervention when it comes to improving academic performance.

Why half the people in China need their eyes examined A lack of eye doctors in China, particularly in rural areas, and the increasing time spent staring at phone and computer screens, has left half the population suffering from bad sight. A charity sees solutions in its experience in Rwanda

Xi Jinping aims to eradicate poverty in China by 2020, but is that goal still within reach as families fall through the cracks? 30.5 million people are waiting for an answer.

The forgotten farm families in Beijing’s anti-poverty drive A single mother who was denied government aid in northwestern China rejected her neighbours’ idea that she sell her daughters: ‘I will carry on, no matter how hard life is’

A happy Children's Day to all the students and little ones, from Beijing to Kashgar!

About 22% of all children in China are living without one - or both - of their parents. Of these 61 million children, many of them will fall behind and drop out of high school.

Left-behind children a poignant reminder of the cost of China’s development Lijia Zhang says in the run-up to Children’s Day on June 1, China should take action to help the millions of children living away from their migrant worker parents

Check out this video interview with the Stanford researchers who found the high levels of tapeworm infection among rural Chinese school children!

Disease in Schools: Toward a solution for common tapeworm infection Tapeworm infection tied to pork consumption in poor regions can cause cognitive damage and enforce cycles of poverty. A new study is the first to look at inf...

Potentially fatal tapeworm infections run rampant in China's rural schools, according to a leading study led by Stanford. Treating the infection, which affects more than 7 million people in China alone, could improve scholastic achievement and reduce poverty.

Treat tapeworm infection to improve academic performance Tapeworm infection from eating contaminated pork can damage the brain, causing learning impairments and possibly enforcing cycles of poverty. A new study is the first to look at infection rates within schools and propose solutions targeting children.