(By Michelle Zou)

The CTEF 1+1 Student Sponsorship program has doubled its size over the past year. By September 30, 2010, we had 64 students in the program. As of today, September 25, 2011, when I am writing this blog, we have 120 students in the program, including 72 students from Sichuan, 35 from Heilongjiang, 9 from Guizhou and 4 from Hubei. For school year 2010-2011, the donation from donors is $33,048, and with company match from Microsoft and others, the total amount is $48,217. Some donors are sponsoring multiple students.

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Highlights for the past quarter:

- Our CRM is live now! After evaluated many options, our database team decided to use Microsoft CRM Online to track all the donors, students, projects and volunteers information. The 1+1 program is the first program using this new CRM database, and we are able to see each student’s application and associated sponsor/volunteer information from this system. We will be able to send emails and tax receipts from this system in the future. This will greatly reduce manual work, and avoid human mistakes to allow us scale the program in the future. Special thanks to the database team, Haonan Tan, Hong Liu, Billy Wang, Hao Sun, Zong Yang and Laura Yang. Also thanks Mindy He who spent many days sorted and input all the data into this system.

- We improved the 1+1 program application process. We modified the 1+1 application process to match the cycle of school years in China. Starting from school year 2011-2011, we will accept applications twice a year, at the beginning of fall and spring semester. We investigate students’ financial situation annually, so each student needs to apply every year in order to be qualified for sponsorship for that school year. We also adjusted the donation amount guidance to meet the changes of education cost and exchange rate.

- Our Youth 1+1 program attracts to high school students. We launched the Youth 1+1 program in May with high school students Joshua Zhang and Kevin Zhao leading for their own high school. At the end of September, we will have our first new volunteer orientation for new high school volunteers recruited by these two students. Great progress in this new program by our young volunteers.

- We have new students waiting for sponsors. Since the new school year started in September, our local volunteers in China, Waisiu Law, Huifang Chen, Haiyan Sha, and many others, have been selecting and qualifying new students, we now have new students available for the 1+1 sponsorship. If you are interested to learn more about the students, please go to the forum to find information or sponsor a student.

We want to thank all the volunteers for your hard work to grow the program so we can help more students in China, and thank all the donors for your generous donation and caring hearts to help the students become healthy and responsible global citizens in the future. At CTEF, we will continue work hard to change the lives of those underprivileged students in China through education.

(Please contact Michelle Zou if you are interested to learn more about the program.)