Creating Opportunities for Students in Rural China

When Anthropology Professor Steve Harrell and several of his students created an NGO in the Liangshan, or Cool Mountain, region of southwestern China, it was to fund something near and dear to their hearts: education.

Harrell, who has studied the Nuosu people of Liangshan since the early 1990s, had already joined colleagues from Taiwan and France to raise funds to build a primary school in a rural village. The school opened in 2000, offering an education through grade six. But for children who wanted to take the next step, there were few options. 

“It was expensive for students to go on to middle school,” says Harrell, “particularly those who tested into a better, more distant middle school.”

In 2004, UW undergraduate Katharine Liang, an alumna of the UW-Sichuan exchange that Harrell directs, had an idea for raising funds for scholarships: create and sell a calendar using photographs taken in the area. A group of undergraduate and graduate students sold their first calendars in autumn 2004, raising about $3,000. Soon after, Harrell, along with PhD students Barbara Grub and Tami Blumenfield—both doing research in the Liangshan area—and undergraduate alumna Victoria Poling ('04) decided to formalize their efforts, creating the Cool Mountain Education Fund (CMEF). Their calendar sales plus donations have grown to nearly $15,000 a year, with about 120 scholarships awarded last year.

“When I was interviewing families about their methods of raising livestock, which is my dissertation topic, they all talked about how important it was that their children could attend primary school and that they now had the chance to go on to secondary school,” says Grub. “This wouldn’t happen for the vast majority of these kids were it not for the financial support that CMEF provides.”

Grub understands the families’ concerns better than most. She was raised on a ranch in an “extremely rural, rather poor” area of eastern Washington, traveling 40 minutes to town—Bickleton, population 90—to attend school. “I understand at a very personal level how education can free you from your past and allow you to control your future,” says Grub. “Here I am, nearly finished with my PhD. I don’t live in rural poverty, I've been to four continents, and I have so many opportunities awaiting me when I’m done with school. I’d like to help the people of Yangjuan and Pianshui, China the way that so many people helped me.” 

A growing number of UW students now conduct research in the Liangshan region thanks to the undergraduate exchange with Sichuan University, studying everything from indoor air quality to the success of various cash crops to gender issues. As a result, word about CMEF has spread. “Everyone who goes to the village develops this affection and relationship with the village,” says Blumenfield. “The people are very welcoming and caring.”

With CMEF humming along, its board members— now totaling eight—could just continue with business as usual. But they’re hoping to do more. “We’d like to hire a staff person and expand beyond this one village,” says Blumenfield. “But we all have limits. We’re just graduate students and faculty, with no real background in doing this. At some point, we need to decide whether to go to the next level and become a more robust project or just be content where we are.”

To this end, Grub, who works at Safeco while writing her dissertation, recently attended a Safeco-sponsored training on board development by Seattle Works. She learned about the stages of board development and what motivates people to give. “Being on a board that is very grassroots—no one at CMEF had previous board experience—I found the training very helpful,” says Grub. “I learned that all boards and organizations have stages of development. We’re in the early stages. Our growing pains—scrambling for funding, engaging with volunteers, figuring out how or if we should grow—are normal. What I really took away from the training is that being on a board is a lot of work. You should expect it, plan for it, and really run with it.”

All good advice. But, says Blumenfield, it’s probably best that they didn’t learn this when they started their NGO. “We probably wouldn’t have gotten off the ground if we knew what we should be doing,” she says. “It just would have been too overwhelming.”

To learn more about Cool Mountain Education Fund, visit www.coolmountainfund.com.