IN BRIEF

AC Milan plans big kick-off in schools

Italian football club AC Milan said it plans to popularize soccer in 1,000 primary schools in China in three years. The club gave a donation to the China Next Generation Education Foundation this month, which will be used to improve sports facilities and cultivate football teachers in those schools. Zhang Lu, an expert from the Ministry of Education, said the project aimed to encourage more children to participate in the sport instead of training future football players.

Saucy looks for cooking hopefuls

Interviewers from China's major sauce producer, Lee Kum Kee, in July began to select candidates in five provinces to take part in a free project to train cooks. The company will give financial support in 2017 to 100 middle school graduates, aged 15 to 19, from mountainous areas. They will learn Chinese cooking skills over three years and also have classes in Chinese, maths, English and nutrition. Since 2011, the event has financed about 440 teenagers from 18 provinces, including southwestern Sichuan province. The company said that after finishing the courses, some young chefs had found jobs in four or five star restaurants in big cities. Some began their own business in their hometowns.

Virtual hens help produce real eggs

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said netizens can raise virtual chickens on its online platform, in an initiative for charity. It said their virtual feed can be transformed from award points during nonprofit activities on the internet. When the chickens lay their virtual eggs, the company says it will buy real fresh eggs from farmers from poverty-stricken areas - and then donate them to children from poor families. The first volunteer team brought boxes of eggs to Xingqian school in July, a school for migrant workers' children in Guiyang city in southwestern Guizhou province.

Students get a 2m yuan boost

China Pacific Insurance donated 2 million yuan ($296,000) in July to 200 high school seniors from poor families in East China's Shandong province, with 10,000 yuan going to each student. In May and June, China Pacific built libraries for 29 primary schools in the poverty-stricken areas of Shandong, to serve pupils there. Its Shandong branch established a foundation last year to better help local teenagers and kids finish their school education. The company estimated the fund had raised about 3.39 million yuan to date.

Milk of kindness for poor families

Women from poor areas in China will be offered free training courses on housekeeping and babysitting, so they can be professional nannies in the future. The organizer, Netherlands-based milk powder producer Royal Friesland Campina NV, donated 1.2 million yuan ($177,000) in July to help 200 rural women who lacked the education or working skills to improve their lives. The first phase of the project was conducted last year, targeting 140 women from poor counties in five provinces. After the one-month training, the monthly salary of those who worked in Beijing reached a maximum 7,000 yuan, according to the company.

China Daily