(By Dennis Su)

The weather report for western Washington has been warning about the first winter storm, and on this Saturday, January 14th, 2012, snow finally arrived and blanketed most of the Redmond, Sammamish area.  But for Microsoft CHIME members and their families as well as other Asian friends, the snow on the ground did not deter them from attending the Chinese New Year celebration festivities held at the Overlake Church in Redmond.

As in the past, CTEF has the fortune to join many other community organizations to take part in the festival.  By 2 PM, Michelle and Dennis put the display booth together along with the new banner designed by our Board member Yilei.  Our 1+1 Youth program volunteer, Joshua Zhang, was able to take time off from study to man the game section of our booth.  (See photo)  By mid afternoon, the place was so crowded we passed out all the prizes to those who stopped by to play the popular game of moving marbles with chopsticks.  Dennis was glad to see all the surplus gifts from past CTEF events sitting in his basement were given to all the happy winners. They were glass paper weights, hand sanitizers, ball point pens, and mini terra cotta soldiers. 
The evening performance was the other major part of new year celebration.  Again, CTEF was featured in a PowerPoint prepared by volunteer,      , and this very professional looking PPS was well received by the audience.

(By Dennis)

On Monday, January 30th, 2012 , the two sophomore students, Catherine Foster and Jessica Collins,  from the prestigious private Seattle Prep High School who introduced CTEF to the school's Christmas Tree Fund Drive last December, presented us with a check of $2,619 to fund the pre-school classroom in Huang Yuan Central School in Gansu. 

This show of generosity began with the two sophomores (left of Dennis) who visited China last summer and witnessed the conditions in some rural schools, and were impressed and moved that they wanted to do something for the rural students.  After their trip, they originally planned to raise money for the earth quake damaged area in Yushu, Qinghai Province and contacted CTEF for assistance.  Dennis forwarded their idea to the Sowers Action's volunteer team that visited Yushu last summer, and the team reported that the region is flooded with relief funds and materials that additional donation would have very little impact.  At a meeting with Sowers Action in Hong Kong in October 2011, the plan has been revised to help a school in Gansu that CTEF funded in 2009, and due to the demographic change, the school is now planning a pre-school program in one of the vacated classrooms. 

The current plan for the Seattle Prep's donation is to furnish this pre-school classroom with kids furniture, toys, and other early childhood education equipment.  Communication with Sowers Action and the school has began, and to make this project more exciting, Catherine and Jessica proposed to visit the school with CTEF and Sowers Action this summer if all conditions are in place.  Furthermore, a Seattle film maker, Lu Leslan, expressed interest to do a documentary on this journey.  This would be very exciting if things all work out.  Please stay tune.

Thank every one for continued support to us. Please share our happiness and fulfillment with a bright prospect for the new year!  The the greeting card below is from Dandeline  school-- the middle school in Beijing for migrant workers's kids. We funded with dictionaries for the study group of whole school this summer. 

(By Jenny Yang)

Thank you for supporting CTEF! Our board members and professional art teachers have reviewed all the cards and placed their votes.

Here are the winners:

First Place-  Cindy Cao

Second Place-  Amanda Ong

                       Patrick  Peng

Third Place-  Christina Li,

                   Brandon Peng,

   Tina Yuchi Li

Popular Vote Winner- Renee Wang

Congratulations to everyone! Your prizes will be sent to you soon via mail .

Thank you!

Jenny
CTEF Volunteer

The Dandelion School is the first migrant workers’ children school CTEF sponsored. We donated dictionaries for the school this summer.

Due to historical reason, the students admitted to the school tend to have low-grade… as quoted by the letter—99% of students admitted cannot pass the standard testing.  Amazingly, with the dedicated staff and support from the society, now 97% passed the test!

(By Yilei Wang)

Our 1+1 Student Sponsorship Program is almost two years old!  We have grown from supporting a dozen students to close to 200 kids from elementary to college students today.  We could have not accomplished this without your love and kindness.  At this time of the year, our 1+1 committee and volunteers in China have been working around the clock to collect and evaluate new student applications.  We approved 60 students, and posted their information on CTEF forum: http://ctef.org/forum/index.php?board=1.0.  We believe your generosity is the best new year gift to them, and will make a difference in their lives.
Here is the information of our couple new applicants:

XSIC11214袁明（Yuan Ming)

My parents and grandma all passed away.  My younger brother and I live with our grandpa.  We have a less than an acre land and seven chicken.  Annual income is 300 RMB.  I’m an 8th grader in a boarding school, and rank the 3rd in my class.  With some government assistance, I still fall short on school fees.  

XHLJ11097王岩（Wang Yan）

My Parents are divorced.  Though working hard to make money, they are not able to provide for me.  I’ve been growing up with my grandparents.  Grandpa is disabled.  Grandma has high blood pressure.  They make a living by repairing shoes everyday.  I am achieving excellent grades in school, and don’t want to drop out.

100% of your donation goes to students you support. 
Please use this link to choose students you want to support.  
Here’s the donation link.
After donation, please inform scholarship@ctef.org of your name, donation amount, and name of the student you support.  
Thank you!
Your friends at CTEF

Join us at our first Greeting Cards Contest! The contest is to raise awareness of the educational need for rural area children.  You born to different life. We hope to give our children a chance to understand different lives, appreciate lives and further show their love via creativity card design. All the submitted cards will be used for fund raising purpose.  Please help us and give a gift of love!

儿童贺卡制作大赛旨在引起社会各界对中国偏远山区孩子教育的关心。都是孩子，命运迥异。我们希望通过这个活动给这里的孩子们一个了解中国同龄人的机会，懂得 珍惜生活，并能通过一张张的贺卡体现爱心。所有提交的贺卡会用于基金会的义卖，所有收入将公布使用的途径。希望更多的朋友能关心支持我们的努力。

Please see http://www.ctef.org/cards/ for details!

By Dennis Su

Photo taken in front of the Shanghai Mansion Hotel by the Sozhou Bridge, near the Bund.

This meeting with the Microsoft team in Shanghai was the result of countless emails during my trip to China with Waisiu Law and ZhenWei. One reason was the tight meeting schedule that my delegation group has arranged for the only full day we had in Shanghai, the other was for Waisiu to book his train ride from Hangzhou into downtown Shanghai where my hotel was.

The main purpose was to discuss face to face with Zhen Wei and his team of Microsoft Shanghai to explore their idea of becoming a part of CTEF to help the rural schools. Wei ( his last name and the one with the circle tee shirt) was instrumental in raising fund to build the famous “husband and wife” school in Sichuan. He is hoping that with the momentum of helping rural school in place from his office in Shanghai, that a CTEF Shanghai can be established to help more school children.

With the elusive wi fi in the hotel, my only communication with both of them in two places was erratic, but eventually, with the help of someone else’s cell phone, I was able to return to the hotel by the Suzhou Bridge just in time to greet them after their late lunch.

The meeting went well because Waisiu already gave them a detailed briefing during lunch to Wei Zhen, Zhao Yinbin and his friend, about CTEF’s history and operation, so they became fully aware of the situations and conditions we have to face. If we like to achieve our goals both sides of the Pacific, it would be better for us to operate independently. For CTEF, we would treat the Shanghai team as one of the Chinese NGO, like Our Free Sky, or Warm 1+1.

The main reason for this type of relation works is the fact that if CTEF has a “chartered” office in China, both the US and Chinese governments will be breathing down our necks and we would be controlled and governed by many regulations as well as international laws. It is unfortunate that we have to work sort of “underground” like many NGOs in order to operate with no interference by the governments.

We suggested to Wei and Zhao to set up a group in Shanghai and to do their own project search, evaluation, and selection as well as fund raising. CTEF would be happy to help them in doing so and may even offer support financially if the project meets the criteria from the US side. As for the name of their group, it would be up to them to decide. If it would help them to gain credit and trust from donors in China, they can mention that we worked on a school before, but should not identify as part of CTEF. They will work on a proposal for us to consider the final working relation.

It is encouraging to see such enthusiasm from the Microsoft Shanghai office and Waisiu would be happy to work closely with them on this.

At  CTEF, we work with many other non-profit organizations—so we could share our experience, and learn from each other.  

BuildOn(http://www.buildon.org/) is focused on building schools in developing countries or support after school program in the US.  As we work on in many similar areas, it is very interesting when we share our stories.

This past Wednesday, Dennis, Milly and Xin participated BuildOn’s 20th Anniversary dinner.  We talked to Randi Herdin (Co-President, RPX Research) about our observations during our work in building schools in China and she talked about their recent fundraising effort where we can benefit from.

(By Ling Zhou)

In CHIME’s 2011 Microsoft Giving Campaign Party on 10/21/2011, we successfully set up and present a booth which greatly promoted our organization and expanded our influence.

The latest newsletter and the flyers of our programs were widely distributed, which greatly helped on disseminating our mission and introducing our various donation and sponsoring programs.

We also had a box of Chinese books and DVDs for kids to give away to all the participants of the giving campaign, from which we actually raise $172 donation totally.

To better illustrate to donors how we helped poor students in rural China, Ms. Laura Yang, one of our volunteers showed the pictures on her visiting the students she has been sponsoring in HeiLongJiang province. We also have new volunteer signed up for our Internship program.

Overall, the event was a great success. Many thanks to the devotion of our CTEF members and volunteers:
Michelle Zou, Weijuan Shi, Mark Liu, Haonan Tan, Laura Yang, Lanqing Qiu, Tiffany Shao and Ling Zhou.

Special thanks go to Lanqing Qiu, who prepared&printed the flyers, set up the booth and led the booth event.