"春蕾计划"25年

Commemorations have been held to mark the 25th anniversary of the founding of the so-called Chunlei Program here in China.

Literally translated as the Spring Bud program, Chunlei was set up in 1989 to pool donations from around China to help young girls get an education.

At that time, around 4-million young people in China's rural areas, the vast majority of them girls, either didn't go or were forced to drop out of school because of a lack of money.

Zhao Donghua is the vice-President of the China Children and Teenagers Foundation, the group which set up Chunlei 25-years ago.

"So far, we have received nearly 1.5 billion yuan in donations. Over a thousand schools have been built across the country for female students. Our program has benefited over 2.5 million school-aged girls, and another 500-thousand women beyond high-school age have also gone through technical training. The program mainly focuses on the Western part of China, as well as regions inhabited by ethnic groups. It covers 31 provinces nationwide."

School-aged girls in China's ethnic areas are often deprived of a chance at an education, as families with multiple children often choose to send their male children to school to save money.

Ethnic minorities in China are not subject to the one-child policy.