StartSomeGood Impact Story: Jingpo kids' culture center opens in China
About 11 months ago, Dutch-born Dr. Anton Lustig and his wife, Beijing-born Li Yang started a crowdfunding campaign on StartSomeGood to fund their dream of empowering the Jingpo minority children in a remote region of China. They raised over $2,000 to build an activity center where these children will be able to unleash their creativity and build self-esteem. Fast forward to today:
A big village-style housewarming, with shamanistic rituals
by Anton Lustig
The Jingpo/Zaiwa ethnicity’s Western Mountain villages are in a subtropical border region of China, surrounded by Burmese territory. This is where our unique and beautiful Children’s Activity, Arts and Culture Center has just been erected, the home of the Prop Roots Program and myself and my wife Li Yang. Our project aims to boost these minority children’s self-esteem and empower them to take their future into their own hands within a society that is highly challenged by poverty, cultural erosion, and tremendous problems surrounding drugs and HIV/AIDS. My wife was trained as a lawyer and has extensive experience working in communications and PR for international organizations. I am an artist and also the world’s main specialist on the Jingpo’s Zaiwa language. We are joined and supported by capable volunteers from all over the world.
Constructing the project center was mission impossible. Everything took longer and turned out to be more expensive than calculated. The highly original Jingpo style pro bono design was too unusual for the local constructors, and even our last savings were not enough to get us out of these troubles. At last year’s most critical point we turned to crowdfunding, and our campaign with StartSomeGood made a huge difference! Moreover, it showed us again how important it is to communicate with individuals and organizations that are also struggling to get the impossible done. Together we strive to constructively share ideals, creative ideas, and unique solutions, by any means possible. Who couldn’t use a little inspiration?
The day of our official opening was an important media event, providing a highly useful platform for introducing our project. The video footage will eventually be used in a China Central Television documentary. But from the local perspective it was just as meaningful, a real village happening! When Jingpo families have built a new house, there is always a big housewarming event for and by the whole village, and our ‘opening’ was no exception, with many villagers contributing to it, for free and with zeal. We have fully become a part of the community. The shaman did a great job that day, and the rituals in and around the center were even more traditional than usual.
Here’s a link to a more detailed blog post about that great day, with even more amazing pictures.
Prop Roots’ Facebook page
Prop Roots on Twitter
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