What's New?

Update (July 31, 2017) Dr. Yang visited students at their homes on July 1. He talked with high school graduate students in the morning of July 7, and gave a talk about HEF to about 140 semi-government employees in the afternoon of July 7. Both are well received.

Update (July 14, 2017) Xi Lu wrote a very nice article in American Chinese Publication about Dr. Yang and Hometown Education Foundation.

Update (Nov. 5, 2016). We are able to support 1203 poor students with 122K Yuan RMB during 2016-17. We expand our service to Hui Ning County, Gansu Province during 2016-17.

Update (June 15): We had a successful one day fundraising at GlobalGiving's promotional site with potential 30% match-up and received $10K donation, including some new supporters.

Update (May 1): Prof. Hubbard met with his sponsored student and two other students at Hefei, and gave his sponsored student a laptop in very good condition donated by his friend. He originally wanted to buy one for her, his friend heard about the girl's story and was moved and donated a used one (very good condition). Inpsiring story.

Update (2/20/2016) A very generous donor contributed $25K recently to this program. His company will match up another $10K. It will make huge difference to the poor kids. Thank you very much for his and his family's generous support.

Update (2/10/2016) Two 5th graders Raina and Andrew in Seattle area wrote a book for the HEF and sold quite a few copies for $220, all donated to HEF. Microsoft also matched up another $220 to the HEF as their parents are MS employees. It is very inspiring. Thanks a lot, Raina and Andrew.

Update (1/1/2016) We have received 898 donations in 2015 total $165569. Again, we support 1025 poor students, including 101 college students. There are 19 monthly donation.

Update(10/6/2015). We are able to support over 1000 poor students the first time, and over 100 college students for the first time too.

Update (3/14/2015) I have sorted out close to 300 letters from students to their sponsors outside China and sent them out to the sponsors. Here are the links to some of the letters, well worthy reading.

Update (3/4/2015): Representing our partner Zhong Mei Ai Xin, Dr. Tonghai Yang was awarded Zhong Guo Feb. (2015) Hao Ren Award. Here is the link to Anhui's nomination for this award and comments.

Update (11/4/2014): Special thanks to Jie Ling, Bo Wu, Bolin Ding, Chao Li, Shawn Wu, and others during Microsoft Giving Campaign Month in October, we received over $10K+ generous donation from 39 employees in MS and MS match-up. You guys did a great job!! Thanks!!!

Update (10/18/2014): We are able to support 888 poor students in China this year from last year's 757 thanks to more generous support from caring people like you, and a successful fund raising at Microsoft last October.

Update (6/20/2014), We visited 8 poor students families in Fu Le area of Ningguo City/County. Please click here for the visit. The Ningguo City main newpaper ran an article about 10 years of Zhong Mei Ai Xin on June 12, 2014. 20 sponsors (donors) from Nanjing came to Ningguo to chat with their sponsored students on June 13, 2014.

Upate (12/31/2013) We received $70183 generous donation this year. Thank you all for your generious support. We support 757 poor students during 2013-14.

Update (12/16/2013) Dr. Yang gave a talk at Microsoft's Chinese organization Chime about this program. Here is the PPT file.

Update (11/3/2013) We have an excellent month of giving campaign at Microsoft last October, resulting more than $10000 pledges (with MS matching) and quite a few volunteers. Thank you very much for your generous support, Microsoft Employees. This is the first time we do this, and we hope to do even better in the years to come. Please encourage your friends to support us.

Update (10/20/2013). Thanks a lot to your generous support, we are able to support 757 poor kids this year. Here is the list. We might increase it 760 soon at request of some sponsors.

Update (8/4-5/2013) Victor and his son George visited to their sponsored students in Ningguo. Here is their essay.

Update(6/5/2013) Dr. Yang visited poor students in Tian Hu School on Saturday June 1, and Gang Kou Middle School and Gang Kou Elementary School on Monday June 3 (I, II).

Update (2/17/2013) We have received close to 200 letters. Most of them have sent to sponsors. Some are translated by graduate volunteers at UW-Madsion and Ms Lianlian Wu at California. They will be sent out soon. SOme of the letters and articles are posted here. They are moving and inspiring.

Update (12/31/2012) We end this fiscal year with 300 generous donation of total $60111. During the academic year 2012-13, together with our partner Ningguo City ZHong Mei Ai Xin, we support 718 needy students from 3 different counties, including 59 college students, 129 high school students in Ningguo, Anhui, 46 high school students in Yushe, Shanxi, 10 high school students in Jinzhai, Anhui, 216 middle school students in Ningguo, Anhui, and 258 elementary school students in Ningguo, Anhui.

Update (12/11/2012): Yushe High School Support files have come. A webpage is created.

Update (11/27/2012) We extended our support to 10 needy students in Jingzhai County, Anhui Province.

Update(8/31/2012) We put more letters from high school graduates on web. They are really moving and appreciative.

Update (8/24/2012). 23 high school students we supported were admited to 1st and 2nd class universities, the best one Ting Sun will go to Beijing Normal U. In addition, 6 will go to 3 year professional colleges. Congratulations to all! On Aug. 10 and 11, Dr. Yang talked with them and visited some of the other poor students. See photos:

www.HometownEducation.org/photos12-1

and

www.HometownEducation.org/photos12-2

We have made a big difference to them. Please support us with your donation!

Update (3/19/2012). More letters have arrived and some sponsors have replied to their sponsors. Here are a couple of examples

Update (Feb. 17): I sent out more than 150 letters today and will send out another 20 letters soon. The students's letters are moving and appreciative.

Growth of HEF Update (January 2, 2012): Thanks to our donor's generous donations, we are able to support more and more poor students, despite ever falling dollars.

Update (Dec. 24): We reach a milestone of $50000 donation in one year on December 24 thanks to Qing Lu's generous donation this morning. This is the first time our annual donation is over $50000. Really cool feeling. Thank you all for your support. Please continue to support us.

Update (Nov. 30, 2011): We support 699 students this year, including 263 elementary school students (Anhui), 240 middle school students (Anhui), 120 high school students (Anhui) and 40 high school student (Shanxi), and 34 college students (Anhui). The supported college students were supported by people who have sponsored for several years.

Update (November 23, 2011): Great Thanksgiving news! Thanks to the love of 1648 supporters, Hometown Education Foundation has won $25000 support from Chase! And we are #34 among thousands of charities participated! Thanks to all of our donors and supporters, we can now support additional 300 more students!

Winning screen shot in Chase Community Giving

November 8, 2011, we support close to 700 needy students again this year! Thank you all for your generous support.

A very generous donor donated $4000 anonymously on Nov. 1 2011, which could help 50 needy middle school students! Thank you so much!

I am very happy to report that 16 of high school students we supported got into regular universities (first and second class) this year. Evven better, they will partially be supported by their sponsors until they graduate from college. Please check here for the list and some of their letters.

June 11 and June 13, I visited some students we supported. Here are some photos and short description. I and II

 

March 30 (2011): Mr. Yonghong Ren donated 71 shares of Broadcom stocks worth of $2896.80. He has been a very generous donor all these years and helped us establish Yushe County Highschool (Shanxi) as one of the two bases we support students.

March 29 (2011): We put letters of students (2011) on web. Here it is.

 

Feburary 12(2011): We received more than 160 thank you letters from students sponsored by you (we support more students by general donation). They appreciate your support very much. We will put some of them on web and send all to their sponsors soon.

December 31(2010): We went to Spin Milwaukee (a Table Tennis Bar in Milwaukee) to put a donation box for the night and also distributed some brochure for the HEF while Peter Yang was playing for a Table Tennis Competition/Entertaining at the bar. We received $83 donation from the box and hopefully will get some donation from people who read the brochure. This year, we have received $48237 generous donation, up from last year's $39212. We have supported close to 700 needy students this year. We need your support to continue helping these kids and others in similar dire condition. Please make your donation to us---100% of your donation goes to the needy students directly!!!

December 25(2010): We add another photo page for YuShe High School students:

http://www.hometowneducation.org/photos10-YuShe.html

December 19(2010): Another very generous donation of $5000 arrives today by a very generous couple who also prefer to be anonymous. Thanks.

December 18(2010): A generous anonymous donor gives us $2500 very generous donation through the United Way of Greater Rochester, NY. Thank you so much for your generous donation. It will make a big difference to the poor kids.

December 18(2010): I added a new webpage for students at YuShe High School.

http://www.hometowneducation.org/photos10-YuShe.html

December 2 (2010): Prof. F. Nazarov donated $1000 to the HEF. Thanks so much.

November 25(2010): Thanksgivings. We updated the webpage list of needy students to include the new files of Yu She County High School students. Please check

http://www.hometowneducation.org/studentslists.html

November 25(2010, Thanksgiving). Professors Jian-Shu Li and Ren-Lan Liao are very kind to sponsor another three middle and high school students. They have supported Limin Yan from high school all the way to college. Limin will graduate from college next Spring with outstanding record. Zheng Mu and Lin Ma sponsored Yan Yang---a 10th grader in Yu She County High school. Qian-Yong Chen sponsored an 11th grader girl Ming Lu in Yu She County High School, Shangxi Province. Special thanks to all you.

November 3 (2010) Ying-Qing Wu and Lin Ding makes another big donation $1000 to the HEF. We also have a new sponsor QIng-Yong Chen who sponsors a high school student through us. Thank you so much for your very generous support.

October 17 (2010): Peter Yang (11 years old) won the under 2000 event of the Rockford Open (Table Tennis), and donated half of his prize ($20) to the Hometown Education Foundation. Thanks, Peter.

July (2010): We gave $32000 to our partner Zhong Mei Ai Xin in Ningguo, Anhui, China to support poor kids for year 2010-2011. We gave $4000 to YuZhe High School, YuZhe County, Shanxi, China to support about 30 poor students during 2010-2011.

July 12 (2010): Mr. Zhou and Ms Shi, two very generous donors in Nanjing, sponsored more than 100 middle and high school students we supported to Shanghai to see the World Expo. Here is local news report (Chinese Video), and students's essays about their visit.

June 25-26 (2010): Mr. Johnson, a graduate student at UW-Madison visited six students he sponsored at their homes and other students we supported. It is a very inspiring story. Here is the local news report (Chinese video), and a brief summer of his visit with photos.

June 8-15 (2010): A group of 11 UW-Madison students volunteered to three rural middle school in Ningguo, Anhui, China to teach Englsih and US culture for a week and visited poor students we supported. Here is the local news report (Chinese video), and their essays(both Chinese and English).

June 6 (2010): Ms Hannah O Day has not only sponsored 7 students (3 elementary school, 1 middle school, and 3 highn school students) but also made a big effort to get the Hometown Education Foundation listed in IBM's charity list so that employees can donate to HEF through IBM. She also spreaded words to others about the HEF. Thank you very much for your very generous support, Hannah.

On May 30, Prof. Cheng informed me that his class has donated $216 to support 3 students.

On May 6, after the exam, my Math 319 students donated total $205 (all anonymous into a donation box). Thank you all!

On April 28, the Chinese Undergraduate Student Association at UW-madison donated $260 (dontion from students) to the charity. They plan to organize 12 students to visit and teach in 3 middle schools in Ningguo, Anhui, China. This is 2nd time they do this. They will also visit poor kids in this area.

On march 25, Miss Amanda Hittson, a graduate student at UW-Madison, very generously donated $1000. We also received another generous $650 donation from Ms Hu to continue sponsoring 5 students and three more. Thanks a lot for all your generous support.

On march 12, we received very generous donation of $1500 from Mr. N. Christie in UK. He found us from the internet. Thank you so much for your generous support, Mr. Christie.

With one week of hard work, I have finally sorted out near two hundred letters from the sponosored needy students and sent most of them to their sponsors. Some volunteers have helped to translate the letters to the non-Chinese speaking sponsors. They are moving and appreciative and informative. I have read all the letters arrived and are moved by them. Some of them are now in the web. Please check it out at

http://www.hometowneducation.org/letters.html

March 5 is another big day for HEF. Ho Au-Yeung donated $1000 to sponsor 9 students. He sponsored 7 students last year and 5 the year before. We also received $1000 matching-up donation from Motorola which matches up Chun Liu and Heng Zhang's generous donation last year. Thank you all for your very generous support and trust.

On March 4, 2010, Jing Zou, a Ningguo native, recruited her laws (Mark, Olga and Ryu; Joost and Corry) in Netherlands to donate $400 through Google Checkout. Thank you all for your generous support.

On Janurary 19, 2010, a generous donor donates $1500 anonymously. Thanks a lot for your generous support.

Mrs. Chen, 85, at California, contacted me today (December 20, 2009) to sponsor a middle schoo or highschool girl today. What an inspiring story. Thank you very much, Mrs. Chen. A couple of days ago, Amy from New Jersey that she will sponsor a student in the name of her parents-in-law, who prefer helping the poor kids than receiving a gift. It is really moving. Thank you all. We will continue to work hard and will not disappoint you.

 

Today (Dec. 10, 2009), I had the last exam for my Math234 class (about 200 students), and asked for their donation of of changes to the Hometown Education Foundation. Guess what, we got a total $288 donation, a very nice gift to the poor students. Thank you all!

What a thanksgiving gift for the Hometown Education Foundation! Today (Nov. 27, 2009) we received a surprising $5000 donation from the United Way of Greater Rochester, New York, which indicated the donation as anonymous. It will help more than 60 middle school students for a year (or more than 80 Elementary School students or 33 high school students)!!! We also received $50 generous donation from Yin family and $75 from Baker family today! Please be assured that all these donation goes to the needy students 100 percent! Please help us with your generous donation too. Thanks!

Phil Moy wrote an article on UCS Weekly about the charity on November 20, 2009.

We received $231 from Goodsearch.com on November 20 for our online search and online shopping through Goodsearch.com. It is free money for us to earn. Please help us earn more by using www.GoodSearch.com for your online search and online shopping starting point.

Xun Jiang helped to create a banner advertisement of the HEF for free at Younexus.com on October 10, 2009.

October 9 is a great day. We received a very generous $1000 donation from Ying-Qing Wu/Lin Ding and two new donors---Yang Wang/Weixin Xu will sponsor 3 students, and Luoying Weng, a graduate student at Stony Brook, made his first donation. Thank you all for your generous support.

 

 

Yi Wang and Zhiren Wang, two graduate students at Princeton University, sponsored Min Yang, a 8th grader in Ningguo. Min Yang has been handicapped since birth and her father is sick too.

Mr. Bingzhi Zhao, an undergraduate at UW-Madison, has spent last summer to redesign the website of Hometown Education Foundation. Thanks a lot to his hard work, we now have a much nicer website. Since there are quite a lot changes, there might be mistakes. If you see any, please let me know (thyang63@gmail.com).

I visited five needy students' families on July 6, 2009, and saw direct impact of your support on these poor kids and their families. They (and the teachers) appreciated your support very much, and your support made real difference to them. Please check here for photos and brief description of their situations. It was a humbe and moving experience to me to see how they deal with such hardship.

12 volunteers from UW-Madison Chinese Undergraduate Students Association went to 3 middle schools in Ningguo during June 8-12 to teach English and introduce US to the students at a more presonal level. They also went to poor students' homes to investigate the situations. Local people were very impressed by their work, and they learned a lot from the experience.
Here is their article.(Microsoft Word 2003 or above is required)

Dr. Xun Jiang wrote to his friends to encourage them to support the Hometown Education Foundation on April 26. His friends Jinrong Wang, Ling Chen,  Yan Tian, Feng Qian, Xun Yu, Yin Liu, Ping Wang, Anzhi Lai, and Yu Rao have responded with generous donations of total $930. Thank you all.

Mrs Bi Jia and her 3rd grader son Brian have written letters to their 6 sponsored students. Read a sample of 3 letters here.

Thanks to the help of Mr. Yu Chen, a visiting UW-student, the supported student information from Yu She High School, ShanXi is now on web. We started to support 20 high school students there since last Fall.

The United Chinese Scholars and Students has just donated $1430.17 to the Hometown Education Foundation. Thank Luyan Li, Zhifeng Li, Jianming Zhang and all at the organization for your generous support and trust.

John Zhu, a graduate student at UC-Berkeley , has just sponsored three needy elementary students. Many thanks!

I did an interview last year to be appeared in `Chinese Mathematics Society Communication' soon. Part of it is about the Hometown Education Foundation. Here is the article.

Students have sent their thank-you letters to their sponsors, expressing their appreciation and telling about their progress duing last years. Some of the letters can now be read here

Zhaohui Wu & Yuhong Yang sponsored 7 needy students with generous $640 donation, including 3 elementary school students, 2 middle school and 2 high school students.

We now have a cause `Hometown Education Foundation' on Facebook. We have already had over 100 members there and $60 donation there. Please add Hometown Education Foundation to your cause to show your support.

Walter Cai, a local high school student at Madison, WI, donated his own allowance $150 in January to sponsor Hu Yi, a poor high school in Ningguo, Anhui, China. He has sponsored Hu Yi for three years so far.

Alec Johnson, a graduate student at UW-Madison, has recently sponsored six needy students with $600 generous donation, including 2 high school students, 3 middle school students, and one elementary school student. Thank you very much, Alec.

Peter Yang, a 9 years old boy, went to the 2008 Killerspin Invitational and Holiday Open Table Tennis Tournament (December 27-29) to compete.

He won the Under 1000 Champion trophy together with $25 certificate. He also won $75 when he and his partner Mr. Aaron Avery got the 2nd place in their team competition (under 3000). He was very happy and donated half of his award ($50) to the charity. He also donated $50 of his allowance to the charity.

Summary 2008: We received $27800 generous donation from almost 160 generous donors. Together with more than $20000 generous donation our partner received in China, we are able to support needy students in Ninnguo Anhui Province, and 20 high school students in Yushe County High School, Shanxi Province, China.

A letter from Miss Limin Yan(Microsoft Word 2003 or above required) (December 22, 2008), a college student sponsored by Professors Li and Liao at Hong Kong UST since she was in high school.

List of Students we support for the academic year 2008-09(Microsoft Excel 2003 or above required)

Mr. Jining Hu and Dening Peng went to schools to check on students we supported (Dec. 2008)

Some students Dr. Tonghai Yang visited when he went back to China during summer 2008.

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