Over the past 10 years, about 50,000 teachers, students and children have been exposed to FON's programmes. Each year, it offers two to three training camps for hundreds of interested students and other volunteers who go out to remote rural schools to teach children about environmental issues. Contrary to the traditional classroom approach, their style is highly participatory. FON also has two "mobile classrooms" or vans called "Wild Pony" and "Antelope". They drive around the country providing training to students and teachers.

In 1999, FON launched the "Environmental Education Van Programme" as well as an action group to further environmental awareness among secondary school students in rural areas, "The Green Hope Initiative." It also runs "The Better Environment Scheme," which is sponsored by Shell Co, to encourage primary and middle school students to design and implement environment protection projects in their own communities.

Along similar lines, FON plans to establish training centers to help teachers design new environment-oriented courses, including a variety of field trips for students that highlight the contrast between places of natural beauty and those degraded by human abuse. To disseminate information more broadly, FON plans to design a series of public-service messages for television broadcasts and local and national newspapers.

FON's quarterly newsletter has a circulation of 3,000, with the fees levied from paying members covering production costs. Additional funds for the education programme come from a broad mix of domestic and international companies, foundations and organizations.

Delivering this message to a country just waking up to environmental issues is an enormous and exciting task.

"I want to convey my gratefulness to the people who have supported us. As China rushes to modernize, awakening an environmental consciousness in the Chinese people is more important than ever."

  Forging ahead -- Chinese style

Liang, unlike his ancestors, has learned to pick his battles well. Liang believes in being on good terms with the government because it has the regulatory power to improve the environment. On the other hand, FON also acts as an important watchdog of public environmental policies.

Page:

1

2

3

4

5

6

7