农民工子女将从食物倡议中获益

A forum that discussed ways in which to improve the nutrition of migrant workers' children living in the countryside was held in Beijing on Wednesday.

At the forum, one particular initiative, referred to as the "spring sprout nutrition project", sponsored jointly by the China National Committee for the Wellbeing of the Youth and the Amway Charity Foundation, is widely believed to be one of the nation's model projects for improving the food situation of those children who are left behind by migrant worker parents in the poverty-stricken countryside of central and western parts of the country.

As part of the project, hundreds of well-equipped school kitchens have been built, with kitchen managers and professionals providing students with safe and nutritional food.

Ma Jun, a researcher on children's and teenagers' health from Peking University's School of Public Health, believes that the project will exert a far-reaching influence.

"Through the management and operation of such kitchens, particularly in relation to the establishment of relevant rules, a specific model for managing school dining halls will be established which will effectively prevent students from having to consume inferior-quality food or even worse, suffer from food poisoning."

Since the project was launched in June last year, a total of 300 kitchens have been built in boarding schools located in relatively impoverished areas within Chongqing municipality, the provinces of Shaanxi, Hebei, Hubei and Anhui, and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

According to Lin Wei, an official with the Shaanxi provincial level committee for the wellbeing of the youth, around 43,000 students from 95 schools located across six impoverished counties have benefited from the project so far. Lin drew specific attention to the case of a primary school in Zhulinguan Town, Danfeng County.

"The school had been flooded before the aid project was carried out, and the school kitchen had been destroyed as a result. At this crucial moment, as the school came under immense strain, the Amway Charity Foundation helped build a new kitchen for the school and donated all the necessary kitchen facilities, enabling the children to enjoy a rich variety of food choices."

Li Yvjiang is a student from a middle school in Fuping County, in central Shaanxi province, which has benefited from the scheme. He is excited about the changes that have taken place following the construction of a new kitchen in his school.

"In the past, without a school kitchen, we had to go to town to buy food and take it back to school to eat. It's more convenient now, as we have a kitchen on the campus, and we are more than satisfied with the quality of meals provided to us. And the best thing about it all, once we tell the school authorities what we want to eat, the students' requests are always granted. Now, we can even eat Jiaozi dumplings in our school!"

As China undergoes rapid economic and social development, reports on the condition of migrant workers' children who have to suffer from tainted food sources or tedious food choices as a result of their being left behind are still common within today's press. In a bid to solve this issue, the Amway Charity Foundation announced another 20 million yuan worth of investment during the forum, which will go towards the construction of 400 school kitchens in the provinces of Hubei and Henan and the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region during 2012.

To date, there are 58 million children of migrant workers living in China's rural areas.

For CRI, I'm Xu Fei.