Imagine you’re 13. You’re told all schools will close and you’ll be making bricks from now on. Three years later schools reopen but now you’re 16 so it’s too late to get an education. Your future is bleak. Your parents are poor famers barely growing enough food to feed the family and sell to buy basic essentials.

This happened to Dr. Liu but he was determined to be educated and found his way to the city, got a job as teacher’s assistant and now many years later he’s assistant professor teaching maths at a university. He didn’t forget his home village, dreaming of opening a school for poor children believing education was the key to moving out of poverty. His vision is ultimately for the enrichment of whole community.

Dr. School was opened in 2002 using an old disused school belonging to the railway company. He has the total maintenance responsibility of the site at his own expense. He cannot charge high fees as the families he wants to reach can’t afford it. He has difficulty getting good teachers as he can’t afford to pay them much.

There are between 350 and 400 children from 5 to 15yrs. Many live in as the journey between villages is difficult. Children and teachers work 6½ days a week with 3 consecutive days off a month so they can see their families. They get around $A165 per month plus a shared room.

Now imagine you’re a child away from home for the first time. You share a room with 5 others but have your own bed. You share a plastic bowl to wash yourself and your cloths in. The squat toilets haven’t worked for years as the plumbing needs fixing. At night you all bring up buckets of water to flush the squat toilets. During the day you use the only toilet block across the school field which is just a deep concreted hole where you don’t use water. There is nowhere to wash your hands but then you don’t know that’s a problem.

The only tap is outside and now the hot water boiler is broken - too old to mend - so no hot water. Tap water is unsafe to drink so anything that can be used to boil water is commandeered. In the winter there is no heating. Last winter some of your mates suffered frost bite and chilblains so they’re not coming back. How do you feel? ... But you want to study.

So you want to study biology and become a doctor but there is no science equipment. You will be taken to another school a few days before your exams to be shown experiments and then you will go back to sit the exam a few days later. Feeling confident?

After the Olympics you feel inspired to do a bit of sports to keep fit. So does everyone else but there are only 2 badminton racquets and no court, there are 4 ping pong bats and 2 balls. There are a couple of footballs and an overgrown basketball pitch. But how do you and all your mates get to have much of a go and who’ll teach you?

ChinaHeart wants to help these children and it’d be great if you want to help us help them. If you can donatre please click here. Donations for this project are tax deductible in Australia.