Charity fair to flex its muscles in poverty reduction

China Charity Fair this year will attempt to divert social resources from East China to impoverished regions, in an effort to help the nationwide poverty-reduction campaign, according to its organizers on Monday.

The three-day fair, hosted by Civil Affairs Bureau of Shenzhen, Guangdong province, will be held on September 20 at Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center. The theme for this year is “to reduce poverty for better life”.

The fair will include featured areas for poverty alleviation, including education, healthcare, technology, ecology and starting businesses, and will promote model charity programs to help fight poverty, according to Shenzhen civil affairs bureau.

Several departments, including the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, initiated the annual event in 2012 to promote the development of charities in the country.

Zhang Youwei, an official at the ministry’s Department of Social Welfare and Charity Promotion, said the fair would include activities with a focus on poverty reduction, such as charity program displays, seminars and matchmaking meetings.

“The fair attempts to match the needs of poverty-stricken areas with charities in the better-off East China, and help to alleviate the poverty with precision,” he said.

According to Shenzhen civil affairs bureau, more than 200 enterprises and NGOs has signed up for the upcoming event since June. Organizations could register for the fair at cncf.org.cn.

More than 6,800 Chinese and foreign charities have participated in the event since 2012, and some 550 agreements were made between enterprises and charities. The donations reached 32.4 billion yuan ($4.7 billion), the bureau said.

Chen Rifa, spokesperson for the Ministry of Civil Affairs, said the fair, to be held in one of China’s most affluent metropolises with the aim to help those in extreme poverty, will certainly gain “widespread support”.

China has pledged to eradicate extreme poverty domestically by the end of 2020. The country's poor population, which stood at more than 98 million at the end of 2012, was cut by two-thirds in the most recent five-year period.