Gang Fang School Community Project
Gangfang School Projects Timeline
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Gang Fang School Community Project
Gangfang Village There are two ways to get to Gang Fang, one is on the dirt road which winds off the main road to the Jinshangling Great Wall in Luanping County, Hebei Province. The road is away from bus routes, and consists of an hour or so of a bumpy ride through villages, along a half-dried creek all the way into the hills, avoiding rocks and occasional trucks. Another way is on foot, the starting point at the Simatai Great Wall. At the 11th tower take the left exit and walk for two hours through fields and villages. The wall continues stretching over the hilltops with the famous Wangjing Tower at an auspicious 888m which makes it the highest peak in the area. The name literally means “Toward the Capital” – once upon a time Beijing could regularly be seen from this watchtower but now only on the rare occasions when weather permits and the sky shows its blue coat. Gang Fang (literally translated as “Copper House”) was probably named after the trade common for the area once rich with copper. These days it is just an ordinary village with a thousand plus people, two shops, one market, and one school. Surrounded by hills, a narrow stream divides the village from cornfields and great views of Wangjing Tower and Simatai Great Wall.

Gangfang School
Gangfang School presented itself to us originally as the perfect spot for camping on Day Three of our 5-day Great Wall trek (check Small Steps Adventure for more information on our treks. Every piece of land in China is used for crops so school grounds were a perfect solution for a night under canvas. A year before the actual group arrived we spoke to the school principal and the head of the village, to explain our concept and why we wanted to stay in the school grounds and hoped for the good will of the local community. Both the village head and school principal shrugged their shoulders in slight disbelief: “Why would any foreigners want to come to Gang Fang?” but agreed to welcome us by opening the school gates. Little did we know that the original 87 people in year 2001 would turn into 1,500 visitors by year 2007, all members of different charities. Year by year they have taken small steps on the wall, over the hills to the school where children welcomed us with laughter and presenting China at its best through hospitality and friendship.
Small Steps Community has been learning and growing together with Gangfang children. Project after project has occurred, and from initial gifts that we brought as an act of appreciation for staying in school (pencils, books, maps, footballs, basketballs, etc.) we started to focus more on projects that would enable the school to catch up with the development by raising awareness and preventing the further influence of the already sore migrant issue. A chain of good will was created: one by one groups were involved in helping with funds to set up computer education classes, scholarships for kids with difficult financial situations, and letter exchanges with UK-based schools brought insight the different worlds these children lived in. Each group came with the one wish to rest in the school ground. In exchange they got slightly more, an opportunity to see with their own eyes what was happening with China on the other side of the wall, beyond tourist attractions, among real people. Many would comment on a paradigm shift of how they understood happiness and what they thought their children had to have in order to be happy. In Gang Fang school, dirty hands and smiling faces vibrated with life and friendliness – no video games and fancy clothes, expensive requests. Every morning before the group would depart, children performed a flag raising ceremony with great respect towards the motherland followed by a student representative reading a letter to the group: “Dear Uncles and Aunties… thank you for giving us much needed support and help! I represent our school by saying that we must study hard, we will never let you down, we will give you all our excellent performance. Also, we hope you can come here again...”




Gangfang School Projects Timeline
September 2007
Open Classroom
With supervision and guidance of Meilan Frame we defined our next year’s goals and started to work on implementation of Open Classroom. Zhangdan, Small Steps Community manager, was going to Western Academy of Beijing from September to learn advanced teaching methodologies to transfer to Gangfang school. The primary aim of Open Class is to move away from rote learning and implement rural education curriculum based on student’s self learning, inquisitive learning.
The program was launched December 2007. We go to Gangfang School every Thursday and invite students from pre-school, First Grade and Second Grade to come to our open class, choosing whatever they want to do. We have set up Reading Corner, Drama Corner, Jigsaw Corner and Drawing Corner. Students can determine for themselves what they like to do. Once they start doing some activity, they are required to finish it before they can go and do something else. When they come across a problem, they are encouraged to try to solve it on their own before they can discuss it with their classmates. If that doesn’t work either, teachers will help them find the solution for themselves. Many of the learning materials in the classroom are donated by participants of Small Steps Adventure Great Wall trek.


January 2006 – January 2007
Filming of Documentary Children At the Foot of the Great Wall
In the beginning of 2006 we started a year-long filming of documentary “Children at the foot of the Great Wall”. Every month, together with Joe and our shooting crew-Stone and Mingming- we would go to Gangfang Elementary School, teaching about AIDS while doing the documentary. In the meantime, we interviewed school families, parents and the only female teacher at Gangfang, Ms. Shen and learned about her teaching. School president, Mr. Zhu, introduced us to the school history, basic data on the teachers and the students; Mr. Niu, president of Bakeshiying’s Town Middle School, told us the merging issue schools had to cope with. At the time, Grade Three students and above from various elementary schools in different villages are required to attend Town Elementary School, which brought about all kinds of concerns, such as accommodation, student management and the effectiveness of this policy.


July 2006
Building of the new two-storey school wing – donation of Glen Isaacson, participant of AmFAR Great Wall trek
The new wing now carries the name of Mark Allan Isaacson (victim of HIV), late brother of Glen Isaacson. The building was completed in September, 2006. It was and still is the only two-storey building in Gangfang village and it has a kitchen, a convenience store, bathrooms, a staff office and the computer room.
Meanwhile in August that year, movie director Freddy Coppens with Tabasco came from Belgium with his cast and crew to shoot “China Upside Down” at Gangfang School. The theme of his movie was about different families and their different lifestyles in the economic booming of China 20 years after the Reform and Opening-up policy was carried out. They interviewed about the school development and life of the teachers and students and school President Mr. Zhu’s family and Gangfang school itself were all put into his movie.


December 2005
150 gift boxes – organized by Lisa Gaffney
Approaching the end of 2005, we received donation from Lisa Gaffney from Ireland. Each student at Gangfang got a gift box with clothes, stationery, candies, small toys, etc in it. Students were very happy when they received their gifts.

October 2005
HIV/Aids education classes
Plan is to extend education from school to families, village and county. This is the first primary school in China that conducted HIV/Aids education.
We invited Joe from Red Forest, an AIDS patient organization in Beijing, to join us at Gangfang school, teaching Grade 3 and 4 students basic facts about the AIDS epidemic and how to prevent it. Joe, HIV+ himself, has been working on AIDS-related issues for nearly five years and got lots of teaching and real life experience about it. Together, we shared stories about lives of children affected by HIV/AIDS in Henan and Anhui provinces? Meanwhile, we went to the Middle School of Bakeshiying County and taught AIDS basics there. This is the first AIDS related program run in rural schools in China.

We conveyed a survey for 34 students at the end of our AIDS program and the result is as follows:

At the end of our program, most students got to know how the AIDS epidemic spreads and how to protect themselves from getting it. They expressed their willingness to make friends with HIV+ students and talk with them. They held no discrimination against AIDS patients. Students expressed, in the form of drawing and short writing, their understanding of AIDS and their willingness to become friends with children whose life is affected by AIDS.


Year 2005
Zhang Dan, Small Steps Community Projects coordinator, delivers computer classes 3 days a week.
Continuing support with participants’ donations to the school. Total 5 groups and 190 participants – main focus is to inspire communication from other schools in UK and Gangfang School.
Computer classes continue through the year, Gangfang School receives recognition from the local Ministry of Education.

December 2004 through June 2005
Zhang Dan, student of IT in Beijing, delivers computer classes 3 days a week.
We started going to Gangfang school once a week from the end of 2004, teaching G-3, G-4 and G-5 students there some basic knowledge about computers and computer use, which includes the make-up of computers, CAD and Word. We’ve also taught students math and English with computer and they ‘ve always enjoyed their computer classes. Before we started our program there, teachers at Gangfang had never used a computer, let alone teach with it. But now one of the teaching staff there has learned how to use computers, too.

Year 2004
Total of 6 groups and 150 participants helped in initiation of the second phase of Gangfang School Project. Each visit resulted in donation of notebooks, pens, pencils, teaching material and clothing for children.
Increased of number of children in the school and lack of classroom facilities influenced school restructuring and by the end of the year the 5th grade children had to leave the school and relocate into a bigger school in Luanping County. Answering the call for help participants of AmFAR group initiated donation of $20000 to build an extended wing of school.


Year 2003
Activities stopped due to SARS

November 2002
Additional 6 computers were donated by Small Steps (China) Ltd. 16 children received financial support due to their difficult financial situation at home.

October 2002
Participants donated pens and notebooks. Small Steps donated 6 more computers and computer class started

April 2002
Participants donated pens and notebooks, various school materials, and collected donations for the school which enabled us to donate 10 more computers

March 2002
Participants brought a plentiful supply of pens and notebooks, one part we gave to Gang Fang School and the rest to Huiling (charity that works with children with learning disabilities).

October 2001
Pencils, erasers and pencil sharpeners for 150 kids and one computer

September 2001
Encyclopedia named “10 000 Interesting Things About...” (Children’s Encyclopedia) One computer, speakers and one electric piano

June 2001
Globe, Basketball, pens and pencils A set of books with English on one side of the page and Chinese characters on the other


We give our sincere thanks to everyone who has contributed to Gangfang School’s development and especially to our visitors from England, Scotland, Ireland and the USA!

Across the Divide
AmFAR AIDS Research
British Red Cross
Cancer Active
Champneys
Children In Crossfire Concern World-wide
Disabled Living Foundation
Dublin Simon Community
Extra Care
Galway Simon Community
Help A London Child
Homeless International
London Capital Radio
London Fire Brigade
Maggies Centre
Mencap
Parkinson’s Disease Society
St. Luke’s Hospice
Various participants of Open Trek China