Tibetan woman makes headway in promoting quality community education

In recent years, the government of southwest CHINA's Tibet Autonomous Region has put great emphasis on improving social welfare, especially in education, bringing more benefits to its residents.

Thegovernment has invested greatly to subsidize the education of ethnic Tibetans, ensuring the implementation of universal nine-year compulsory education and elimination of illiteracy among young and middle-aged people in Tibet. Theilliteracy ratein Tibet was reduced from a staggering 95 percent in the 1950s to 2.4 percent in 2010. And the preferential policies also encourage young Tibetans to seek higher and more advanced education in and out of the autonomous region.

Dechen Yudron, one of the beneficiaries of preferential policies, graduated from Peking University in 2010. She then majored in education and Social Policy at New York University. After returning to CHINA, she founded an education consulting company with her friends in 2015.

Dechen Yudron works in her office, preparing classes for children from local Tibetan communities. /Screenshot 

"In the beginning, starting up with systematic community education service was not my intention," said Dechen Yudron. After doing field research and learning about the situation of the local Tibetan communities, she found that there are lots of low-income families with limited access to education. Her team decided to initiate the Sunshine Community Project in 2016 to benefit more Tibetan children.

In the past three years, the Sunshine Community Project has been launched in 14 communities in Lhasa, helping more than 400 students. Dechen Yudron also pays special attention to the students from the relocation community for poverty alleviation and provides free classes, helping them fit in new schools.

Dechen Yudron is having a class in a relocation community in Lhasa. /Screenshot

Dechen Yudron hopes her team could be the positive force to promote the development of education in Tibet. "What I can do now is to take my experience in community education and marginalized education as a reference for the current educational system. I believe our education system will get better and better."