A grassroots NGO in Qinghai Province, the Sanchuan Development Association (三川发展促进会, SDA), has negotiated grant support from the US-based Eurasia Foundation to establish an NGO resource centre in the provincial capital, Xining, to provide information, networking and practical support for Qinghai’s growing NGO community.

“The centre will also serve local teachers, students, doctors—any people who want to work with local communities,” says SDA Director, Zhu Yongzhong (朱永忠). “We are collecting all sorts of NGO-related reference materials, preparing internet services, and also plan to have two or three people working in the centre to help [NGOs] with information collection, proposal writing, etc.”

The Eurasia Foundation’s two and a half year funding package, he adds, will enable the centre to start a programme of networking and training events.

Zhu, an ethnic Mangghuer former schoolteacher who grew up in a village in eastern Qinghai’s Haidong Prefecture, founded SDA in 1999. The group has since completed more than 120 small-scale community development projects in Haidong, implemented through a network of around 100 local volunteers, with net funding of more than USD 1 million raised from international foundations and foreign Embassy small grant schemes. Work has included the building of schools, water supplies, roads and bridges and the installation of greenhouses and solar cookers. SDA also collects oral histories and films weddings, funerals and religious ceremonies in the ethnically complex region in an effort to preserve local cultures and leave a historical record for future generations.

SDA initially worked exclusively in Minhe County (民和县) but over the last three years has extended its reach to another five counties in Haidong, where the majority of Qinghai’s rural population is concentrated. Last year it moved its main office from Minhe to Xining.

Other community-based NGOs in Qinghai, such as the Snowland Services Group (江源发展促进会, SSG) formally established in Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in 2001, have also been developing rapidly. SSG Director, Rinchen Dawa, recently told China Development Brief that the group has been creating new organisational structures to sustain future growth and is now planning to begin publication of a regular periodical to communicate with government and other Qinghai NGOs.

Zhu says that SDA will work as closely as possible with SSG and other organizations as it develops the Xining resource centre. “The long distance goal is for SDA and other NGOs in Qinghai to work together and to share ideas and experiences with local government, to try our best to cooperate with government,” he explains.

Zhu has just returned from a trip to the United States where he was one of 15 Chinese delegates to a Youth Leadership Forum hosted by the National Committee for US-China Relations.

Report by Nick Young, December 6, 2006