My name is Zhang Li, a person who reveres life and cherishes peace.

 Since 2001 I began providing assistance to children in various parts of the Tibet Autonomous Region to attend school, and have since visited hundreds of villages throughout the prefectures. During this time, I gained a deep understanding of the conditions of rural children who have dropped out of school due to a variety of reasons including poverty, loss of family, abandonment, illness, and poor general social awareness of the importance of literacy. I sought to understand the needs of these children and the most appropriate ways to assist them. Although our country has given much attention and support to the education of rural Tibetan children, due to a variety of personal reasons many children are unable to take advantage of this assistance, and have difficulties finding a job even after having received some level of basic education.

 Lhasa, the region’s center of politics, commerce and culture, draws youths from all seven prefectures and 74 counties of the TAR, as well as unemployed youths from the Tibetan autonomous prefectures of Sichuan, Gansu, and Qinghai provinces. These youths have traveled to Lhasa in search of livelihood to support themselves and their families, and yet the majority of them have neither educational credentials nor skills, even less so resources for employment. In these situations, they easily wander astray. Education being a powerful tool for social change, so here, it is my hope that schooling will not only provide these youths with increased opportunities for employment and integration into society, but also help to better the surrounding urban atmosphere.