Zhejiang Xinhua Compassion Education Foundation was founded by Mr Wang JiaXuan in 2007. The NGO’s main area of concern is that children in rural China often go to school with an empty stomach because they do not have the money for breakfast. This causes them to be

malnourished Malnutrition occurs when an organism gets too few or too many nutrients, resulting in health problems. Specifically, it is "a deficiency, excess, or imbalance of energy, protein and other nutrients" which adversely affects the body's tissues ...

and affects both their mental

concentration In chemistry, concentration is the abundance of a constituent divided by the total volume of a mixture. Several types of mathematical description can be distinguished: '' mass concentration'', ''molar concentration'', '' number concentration'', ...

and physical body growth. As education is seen as a way to improve one’s standard of living and help them to break out of the

poverty trap In economics, a cycle of poverty or poverty trap is caused by self-reinforcing mechanisms that cause poverty, once it exists, to persist unless there is outside intervention. It can persist across generations, and when applied to developing count ...

, it is necessary for children to have enough

nutrition Nutrition is the biochemical and physiological process by which an organism uses food to support its life. It provides organisms with nutrients, which can be metabolized to create energy and chemical structures. Failure to obtain sufficient ...

especially when young. In an experiment conducted by Rural Education Action Project (REAP), results have shown that when kids in China are given

vitamin A vitamin is an organic molecule (or a set of molecules closely related chemically, i.e. vitamers) that is an essential micronutrient that an organism needs in small quantities for the proper functioning of its metabolism. Essential nutrie ...

pills, they tend to score better than their counterparts who were not given the pills. To solve that issue, Zhejiang Xinhua Compassion Education Foundation has launched a “One Child One Egg” program that ensures that schooling children get an

egg An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the a ...

a day for breakfast to provide them with the necessary nutrients for mental and physical growth. The program covers 4 main mountainous areas in China namely

Guizhou Guizhou (; formerly Kweichow) is a landlocked province in the southwest region of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Guiyang, in the center of the province. Guizhou borders the autonomous region of Guangxi to the ...

, Gansu,

Sichuan Sichuan (; zh, c=, labels=no, ; zh, p=Sìchuān; alternatively romanized as Szechuan or Szechwan; formerly also referred to as "West China" or "Western China" by Protestant missions) is a province in Southwest China occupying most of the ...

and

Anhui Anhui , (; formerly romanized as Anhwei) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the East China region. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze River ...

. An egg a day may look negligible to some but the nutrients contained within an egg can help boost the growth of these malnourished children. Eggs contain high amount of

protein Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, res ...

fat In nutrition, biology, and chemistry, fat usually means any ester of fatty acids, or a mixture of such compounds, most commonly those that occur in living beings or in food. The term often refers specifically to triglycerides (triple est ...

cholesterol Cholesterol is any of a class of certain organic molecules called lipids. It is a sterol (or modified steroid), a type of lipid. Cholesterol is biosynthesized by all animal cells and is an essential structural component of animal cell mem ...

and

amino acid Amino acids are organic compounds that contain both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. Although hundreds of amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the alpha-amino acids, which comprise proteins. Only 22 alpha a ...

s which are beneficial to a growing child. The NGO has also tried to highlight to the society and world on the need for attention regarding this issue, by inviting the

media Media may refer to: Communication * Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data ** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising ** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass e ...

to observe the program. MediaCorp Channel U is one of the media companies being invited to follow members of the NGO to transport the eggs from the farm to the school before the students can cook them for breakfast. The route to the school was uneven and it took great care to ensure that the eggs were not broken, as a broken egg meant that a child would not get his/her egg for breakfast.

References

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References

See also