Projects Summary
Starting in 1996 DORS has chosen the most disadvantaged villages in Sichuan’s Hanyuan County (and later also Ganluo County) to do poverty alleviation projects. Through implementing small-scale village-level projects, we choose a development direction together with the villagers. The projects DORS has done include roads, paths, electricity, running water, bridges, and other basic infrastructure projects; fuel-efficient stoves, solar energy, biogas systems, and other rural energy projects; women’s microcredit loans projects and household micro-loans; forestry technical training and participatory methods training, along with other capaticty-building trainings; education fees support and school repair, rebuilding and/or facilities/supplies provision; agriculture development; forestry; animal husbandry; and other projects, in sum, 9 major categories of projects (see links on left for examples).
Up to the end of 2007, DORS implemented projects in a total of 16 townships, 37 particularly poor villages, and used participatory methods to implement about 440 projects, with a total of 45,080 instances of villagers benefiting (one instance per project).
Total funds spent amounted to over 8,000,000 yuan (over 1 million USD or 570,000 GBP).
We received the financial support of 13 foundations inside and outside of China, 70 individuals from outside of China and 49 from China.
DORS implements a range of project components. Since 2001 we have focused on integrated projects at village level, which combine numerous component projects as specifically needed in a particular village.
To learn more about DORS approach to community development and participation please see Project Approach.
Our current projects include:
- Integrated Projects in four villages (two supported by Misereor Foundation of Germany, and two by independent donor Pr. Xiong Darun of Nanjing);
- Sustainable Livelihoods – Income Generation Projects in two villages (supported by Misereor);
- Education Support projects including post-earthquake supplies provision and playground construction for schools (altogether 5 supported by MercyCorps organization, of the USA), library-establishment (currently through Global Fund for Children, of the USA), and school fees support (through Global Fund, others through DORS Education funds, and others through DORS Earthquake funds);
- Earthquake Relief Projects—in the county town and rural project villages both, with funds from donations to DORS for earthquake relief; and a four-village Post-Earthquake Rebuilding Project, sponsored by Partners for Community Development (a Hong Kong foundation), which sponsors house rebuilding, training and later, the implementation of a “Healthy Villages” development program;
- Rural Energy Projects—fuel-efficient stoves and biogas systems building projects, sponsored by Charities Aid Foundation of Australia (9 villages) and Worldwide Fund for Nature (2 villages);
- A road project sponsored by the Sichuan Poverty Alleviation Association, which will connect Daying and Titie’amo (Yutian) villages.