About+This+Project

**__ About This Project __**  > O  n  my 12th birthday my grandparents decided to start a family tradition. They decided that when each of their grandchildren turned 12, we would be given $100. But there was a requirement; we could not spend the money on ourselves. W      e were supposed to use the money to try to make a difference in others’ lives   > My name is CJ Pine and  I have grown up in Tianjin, China and my family has a growing interest in China ’s many ethnic minorities. Recently we have had the opportunity to travel out to Western China and meet firsthand some of the minorities living there. We were able to visit some schools and talk with children and teachers. Our trips there had convinced me that I would like to use my $100 to try to help poor children there some how.   > After putting much thought into it, I decided to use the money to set up a wiki that would provide information about the needs of Chinese ethnic minority kids. I also decided that I wanted to try to do something to try to make a difference in the kids' lives. I realized though that my $100 is quite limited in the amount that I could actually hope to make a significant impact on these children’s lives. So I decided to set up a project that would both bring awareness to the needs of ethnic minority children in China and also to ask others to donate money to help the children specifically have better educational opportunities. I also realized that I would have to narrow my project a bit, because of the magnitude of the need in all of China for better education. So I decided to focus on Jishishan County in Gansu Province as the center of my project, because it is the only multi-ethnic autonomous county in all of Gansu  Province including Salar, Baoan, and Dongxiang peoples.