Students at Xinhai primary school in Zhaoyang district of Zhaotong, a city in Yunan province, have lunch in the school canteen on Sept 26, 2011. A nutritious breakfast project run by NGOs is donating food to the students. [Cheng Yinqi / China Daily]

ZHAOTONG, Yunnan - After buying a big meal of fried chicken, salad and ice cream at a KFC store, Beijing father Sun Zaiguang gave an extra one-yuan (16 cents) note to his daughter and encouraged her to donate the money to a good cause.

Sun did this just to cultivate his child's kindness for other people, but he was not aware that the money would finally turn into milk and eggs for some rural students who had never even tasted milk.

The 22,000 students who benefit from these donations live in a remote mountain area in Southwest China's Yunnan.

The area's high altitude and changeable weather mean that the only food plants that grow there are cold-resistant crops like potato and corn, and these are what the people there must live on.

Song Zhaoqin is now 10 years old, but she looks as small as an average 6-year-old in the city.

"I had never had breakfast until March when the school started to provide an egg and some milk every morning," Song said. "I had never drunk milk before, nor had my grandmother."

Song lives with her grandmother, Zhang Jiaying, in Zhaoyang district of Zhaotong. Every morning, Zhang used to cook some potatoes for Song to take to school for lunch.

"Few students eat breakfast, partly because they can't afford it," said Zhang Zhengfu, principal of the Xinhai primary school that takes about 300 students, aged from 6 to 12, from the nearby mountainous areas.

"Before we built our own dining hall at school, the students often brought cooked potatoes for lunch."

The school started receiving donations of milk and eggs from the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA) in March 2010.

The foundation started cooperating with YUM! Restaurants (China) in 2008, with the fast food giant helping to raise money for the nutritious breakfast project at its stores, which include KFC and Pizza Hut. Each breakfast costs about 2 yuan.

"We raised nearly 15 million yuan ($2.3 million) in 2010 for this project to sponsor 22,000 students in 80 primary schools we chose among the eight poorest counties in Yunnan," said Wang Luowei, a program manager with the foundation.

"After customers order food, waiters in the fast food stores ask them if they want to donate one yuan to poor students," Wang said.

The project began in Southwest China's Sichuan province in 2008 and spread to Yunnan in 2010.

When Fan Kaijian, deputy director of the education bureau in Zhaoyang district, heard of the project, he saw a glimmer of hope that the children might be able to stay at school.

"Zhaoyang is one of the poorest areas in Yunnan, especially in the mountain areas," Fan said. "All the schools I chose for the project are in remote areas, where the annual income of a family of five is no more than 2,000 yuan, and where people have never eaten eggs and milk."

According to Fan, many parents in these regions force their children to drop out of school at an early age to earn money in cities.

"A meal subsidy is a reason for students to stay at school," Fan said. "After all, the children only have potatoes to eat at home."

However, Fan worries that once the breakfast project ends, the students will be forced back to having only two meals a day.

"I hope the government can shoulder the expense," he said. "There are 150,000 primary and middle school students in Zhaoyang, which means a cost of 300,000 yuan for breakfast every day, and the education bureau cannot afford that much money."

According to Wang, limited funds mean that the breakfast project lasts no more than two years at each place.

Ma Guansheng, director of the Institute for Nutrition and Food Safety, also thinks the government should provide nutritious breakfasts to students in rural areas.

"According to my research, the height and weight of children in rural and urban areas are quite different, especially in West China," Ma said.

"And children in rural areas also have higher rates of anemia, which can influence their intellectual development.

"Now some Chinese NGOs are implementing nutritious breakfast projects in Yunnan, Guizhou and Gansu provinces and Ningxia Hui autonomous region. But the whole rural region still needs more money than the amount that any single social organization can raise.

"So it is the government's responsibility to increase its input to end hunger among children in these regions."