Annual apdate on the YongShun Environmental project

Underneath follows a brief description of the activities of the YongShun project this year:

This years project activities started with our local partner learning the local needs and working out a draft plan at the end of June. Then, Amity Foundation discussed and revised the plan together with the local partner in YongShun. In the year of 2011, we planned to help 100 rural households to build biogas systems as well as renovation of their toilet and animal pens.

The staff of Amity local project office and professionals from Energy
Bureau made field visits to local townships and villages, learning the
suggestions and needs of local farmers, checking the name list of biogas
construction candidate one by one, giving guidance to preparation work for
biogas system construction.

The construction of 100 biogas system started in
August. During the construction of the biogas systems, the local project office
paid continuous follow up visits to different villages, talking with beneficiaries
and solving difficulties they encountered. The 100 biogas systems will be
completed at the beginning of December.

For the exciting evaluation of this project next week, we have invited qualified experts from Changsha Environmental Protection College

to do the evaluation work with us as well as an external evaluator from Laos.

In other words, the project in Yongshun has progressed smoothly according to our plan. We look
forward to the coming evaluation which will help us to summarize what we have
achieved and what we need to improve in the future. Thank you for supporting
this project!

A new training course on Diaconia- Social work of the Church

This exciting new pioneering project aims
to teach the Chinese church more about the meaning of diakonia (the social work of the Church) and how to put it into practice. As in many countries,
there is a limited understanding in China of the concept and importance
of diakonia as a part of the church’s identity and life.

Church leaders were invited to join the
first part of lectures that took part in June.
Around 40 church leaders from around the province attended. In addition
many students from Hunan Bible Institute also attended. We heard from many of those who attended the
lectures that they were inspired to put what they had learnt into action in
their churches. Ultimately, this project will help them do this. During the last year of the project, some of
the attending churches will be given small grants to use for diaconal
projects.

Our partner in China, Amity, has explained how
this kind of a course is the first of its kind and very significant. The church in China is growing quickly and more
and more Chinese Christians would like to help serve in their church and the
community around them. The government is
also encouraging the church to do this.
However, there is a lack of awareness of how to do this and what it means. There has been some confusion about how the
church should run places like a home for the elderly. In some places, the
church has understood that non-profit equals making no money. So, what happens, is that the places go
bankcrupt as they have no extra money to fix the building, pay for furniture,
etc.
Those who attended lectures this year heard
about what diaconia is, it’s Biblical basis, proposal writing, running
projects, accounting and many other practical skills. When the lectures were
finished there was a lot of enthusiasm from those participating, as they wanted
to know more about how to do diaconal work and were asking for more
training!