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Fall 2017 Newsletter Scholarship Distribution
Ceremony in October, 2017, to the Guanlan Sisters and Their Families
by our Partner NGO, Shaanxi Benevolence Children’s Service Center (SBCSC)
staff. A Letter from the Guanlan Scholarship Founder, Dr. Vilma
Seeberg
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Dear Friends of the Guanlan Sisters,
In this beautiful autumn season, Guanlan Scholarship enters its 17th
year of helping some very special girls in western rural China with
their education and dreams. We are sincerely grateful for your
continued support of the Guanlan Sisters scholarships. Thank you for
supporting us in jointly creating the legacy of the Foundation and
enhancing the life pathways of those special girls, the Guanlan
Sisters as they call themselves. Your generous financial
contributions have helped more than 115 young Chinese girls from
Anjinggou Village (pseudonym) in the Qinling Mountains of Shaanxi
Province in Northwest China. With your help, 20 are continuing in
primary school, 95 completedprimary middle school. An
ever-increasing number of them have passed the rigorous secondary
school entrance exam, 14 entered vocational upper secondary school,
32 upper secondary school; 28already graduated with a high school
diploma, the goal of the Scholarship. We are proud to announce that
17 Guanlan Sisters went on to college. All who persisted through
lower secondary school and further have transformed theircurrent and
future families’ lives. Moreover, the Sisters have demonstrated that
valuing daughters’changes communities for the better. This year, we
accepted 11 new applicants whose parents are physically or mentally
disabled and are facing serious economic difficulties. The girls’
continue the tradition of the Guanlan Scholarship showing their
eagerness to get an education despite the terrible odds.
Our continuing mission is to offer Guanlan Sister an opportunity to
continue their studies, to foster their aspirations, to enhance
their capabilities, to live a life of dignity and respect. This
means that we must continue our efforts for fundraising. Our
long-term local agent, Pang Jian, has established a formidable
Chinese non-governmental, non-profit agency and carries out the work
of the Guanlan Scholarship meticulously. We are fortunate to have a
committed, principled local administrator to oversee selecting
scholarship candidates, distributing funds, and keeping track of the
well-being of the recipients. In addition to the Scholarship work,
he has built a child development center for the Anjinggou families
who have migrated to Xi’an, which includes an after-school cultural
program and a week-end orphan-home.
We have been able to involve a small number of Chinese
philanthropists in the Scholarship, but still rely mostly on
American friends. We are now gearing up to raise funds for the next
academic year. The Guanlan Scholarship Foundation seeks to raise $
6,000 for the 2018-19 school year. All but 10% of the funds go
directly to the Guanlan Sisters to spend on schooling expenses.
We hope you will find it in your hearts to continue to help our
girls. Every contribution helps so much and your donations are tax
deductible. We will send you the acknowledgement of receipt of
donation that you can use in your tax filing for 2017.
The generosity of friends like you who support this fund through
your donations, extends the promise of the Guanlan Scholarship
experience to many daughters of Anjinggou village. Please see the
stories of three of them below.
On behalf of allof the teachers, staff, Guanlan Sisters and their
parents, I want to take this opportunity to extend our many, many
thanks for what you are doing to support these girls in their
schooling through the Guanlan Scholarship Fund. Your investment in
the future of those girls is making a tremendous difference, and we
want you to know how much it is appreciated. This comes with our
highest regards and warmest wishes.
Sincerely yours,
Vilma Seeberg
Founder, Guanlan Scholarship Foundation
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