Earlier this year I partnered with a Nanjing-based charity called the Pfrang Association, which in turn works with the Amity Foundation, China's largest charity. The organization started from a sad situation; the Pfrang family, 2 adults and 3 children, were in their home in Nanjing in 1999 when burglars broke in. Something happened, confrontation and altercation perhaps, and the burglars murdered the entire family. A few months later, a few people were arrested and executed for the crime. The perpetrators were poor, uneducated people from a rural area, driven to desperation by the reality of life in a changing China.

A group of foreigners living in Nanjing at the time decided to start a charity to remember the Pfrang family and to try to address what they felt was the root cause of the crime: inadequate access to education in rural China. The Pfrang Association was born, and, now in its 8th year, the organization continues to provide monetary support to rural children who cannot afford to go to school. The organization sponsors about 150 children, providing all the money needed for books, clothing, boarding, food, and any other costs of living a school-age child might have. Pfrang’s money allows children to go to school instead of being stuck in the rural poverty that affects so many across the country. My work was displayed at a benefit dinner and helped raise more than $20,000 dollars for the effort. You can see more pictures at my archive: Rural Education in China - Jiangsu Province