On May 29, 2026, the mountain wind in Huaihua, Hunan, carried the warmth of early summer across range after range of green hills. After more than an hour driving along a winding mountain road, the truck loaded with desks, chairs and sports equipment finally reached the deep interior of Mayang Miao Autonomous County, Huaihua City. The moment it pulled to a stop, children who had been waiting a long time came skipping and crowding around, their eyes full of curiosity and anticipation. This gift of care, sent all the way from Shenzhen, would become their most special Children's Day surprise.
Ahead of Children's Day on June 1, a public-interest campaign named "Supporting Education with Love, Warming Young Hearts" was held in Huaihua City, Hunan Province. The campaign was jointly launched by the SY Charity Foundation together with the Hunan Provincial Committee of the Jiusan Society, the Huaihua Municipal Committee of the Jiusan Society, the Mayang County Tax Bureau, the Communist Youth League Mayang County Committee, the Mayang County Education Bureau, the Yaoshi Town People's Government and the Shenzhen Houpu Charity Foundation. It delivered urgently needed teaching supplies to children at Yaoshi Town Central Primary School and Zhaoyu School in Mayang Miao Autonomous County, and at Huaihua Hexiang School — filling in the missing piece of the puzzle on their path to growing up.
Three schools, three stories of waiting
An hour's drive away, Zhaoyu School is also waiting for change. Formed in 2025 from the merger of the former Liping Middle School and its affiliated primary school, this nine-year school serves 260 children from several surrounding villages. On a campus that has only just been consolidated, everything is slowly falling into place — except the glaring gap in teaching facilities. "The old desks and chairs were simply not enough. Many were moved over from the old campus: mismatched in height, some with the chair backs broken off," a teacher at the school said ruefully. "We've wanted to get the children a new set of desks and chairs for a long time, but resources are limited, so we've had to put teaching needs first."
Huaihua Hexiang School, in the core area of Hecheng District, faces a different kind of "invisible" difficulty. Now 35 years old, the school enrolls 1,892 students, and its per-student floor area falls well below the provincial standard. Teaching space is tight, specialized rooms are in short supply, there is no standard sports field, and the sports equipment on hand cannot cover the whole student body. The classroom buildings are packed to capacity, specialized rooms have been converted into temporary classrooms, and the playground — never large to begin with — has been carved into several separate patches. "We've bought quite a lot of sports equipment, but still not enough for all the students to take turns with it."
A simple gift, and a weighty concern
Before this donation drive, we looked closely into the real needs of the three schools and focused precisely on their most urgent gaps: 180 brand-new desk-and-chair sets were supplied to Yaoshi Town Central Primary School and Zhaoyu School to replace the old ones, along with sports equipment including 10 basketballs, 2 basketball stands, 10 footballs, 4 football goals, 20 pairs of table tennis paddles, 3 table tennis tables, 20 badminton racket sets, 4 badminton nets and 50 jump ropes — concrete solutions to the "small but pressing" problems at both schools. Desks and chairs were also added at Huaihua Hexiang School, helping the school enrich students' break-time activities as much as possible within its limited space.
"This old desk wobbled so much that my writing came out all crooked," a child at Yaoshi Town Central Primary School said, running a hand over the smooth new desktop and sharing his delight with the classmate beside him. "Now the new desk is perfectly flat, and sitting at it is so much more comfortable."
"In the old days, PE class meant several children taking turns with one battered basketball, and a lot of the time all we could do was run laps around the playground," said Li Siqi, homeroom teacher of Class 2, Grade 4 at Yaoshi Town Central Primary School. "Now that we have this new equipment, the children can finally enjoy sport for what it is. And these desks and chairs could not have come at a better time. Some of the children's old desks rocked so badly they couldn't write steadily. Watching them now, sitting upright at brand-new desks — as teachers, we find it genuinely moving, in a way that's hard to put into words."
For rural children, sport is not only about physical fitness; it is an important way to learn cooperation and build self-confidence. A comfortable desk-and-chair set protects good posture for learning; a racket and a goal let them find joy in running and learn resilience through working together. This kind of inner enrichment may well become an important source of strength for them to overcome the obstacles life puts in their way.
Small lights gathered together become brilliant starlight
"Every item is a small token of our regard. We hope it brings the children in the mountains a little more warmth and a little more care," Wu Na said. "Going forward we will make regular return visits and keep following up on the schools' needs for facilities, as well as on how the children are living and studying. We will keep track of wear and tear on desks, chairs and sports equipment, and arrange replenishment as needed. We will also look after left-behind children and children from families in difficulty, giving them more care and study support, and providing financial aid to students whose families are genuinely struggling. We also hope this campaign will draw more social attention to rural education, hold up a wider sky for children in mountain areas, and let every child grow up healthy and happy under the same blue sky."
