programs

Evergreen Educational Foundation

What We Do...

Evergreen Education Foundation supports several programs to make progress toward our vision and mission

Family Stories Project

To discover Our Roots and Build Connections with Family Elders
Engages in uncovering our family history and fostering meaningful relationships with our elders. Through this process, we can preserve their stories, wisdom, and experiences for future generations.

Empowers Students as Interviewers
When students take on the role of interviewers, they gain valuable skills such as conducting interviews, identifying key themes, and writing concise summaries. Additionally, they learn to appreciate the educational differences between their own experiences and those of the interviewees, fostering a deeper understanding of generational perspectives.

To Understand Through the Lens of Family History
Enables interviewers to empathize with the unique challenges and triumphs of their family elders. By listening to their stories, we can better understand the struggles they faced in coming to and living in the United States, as seen through the lens of individual family experiences.

To Preserve the Voices of Our Ancestors
Creates a lasting legacy by recording the voices of our ancestors who lived through pivotal moments in history. These recordings will allow future generations to hear firsthand accounts of the events that shaped our family’s journey.

Contributes to the History of the Chinese Diaspora in the US
Adding to the collective narrative of the Chinese Diaspora in the United States by sharing the unique perspectives of individual families, these personal stories will enrich the broader historical record and highlight the diverse experiences of Chinese Americans.

Future City Program

Partnering with the Li Geng Sheng Project (LGS) in China, Evergreen Education Foundation began supporting teachers and students from remote areas in China to participate in the Future City competition this year. Future City® is a globally recognized project-based learning STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) competition aimed at elementary and middle school students. In this competition, students work in teams to design a city 100 years into the future using a project-based learning approach. The design process and outcomes are presented through project journals, city papers, physical models, and presentations. By providing resources, training, and professional guidance, we encourage students in remote areas to actively explore STEM, enhance their problem-solving skills, and offer teachers exemplary project-based teaching designs to improve their instructional methods. In February 2024, we introduced Future City to our member schools; from March to April, we actively provided interested schools and teachers with project guidance and training, connecting them with professional engineering mentors.

Support for Parenting and Play Centers in Rural Communities

Evergreen (EEF) is funding the establishment of two community-based parenting and play centers to support additional development of the Humana People to the People’s rural-based community early learning, responsive care, and pre-school education work. Parenting and Play Centers are being funded in two different villages in Teng Chong City, Yunnan Province, China. The Centers will focus upon childhood development programs for the youngest rural children, ages 0-3 years, where the most crucial brain development occurs (“Give Me a Child” Economist, October 29, 2016). Compared to urban areas in China, children in rural China are at greater risk of developmental delays in language, cognition and social emotional skills. In their book, Invisible China (University of Chicago Press, 2020) Scott Roselle & Natalie Hell noted that the most effective action to spur lifelong success and reduce inequity in the world is to invest in programs that target the youngest children (Invisible China pp. 149-150). The project funding supports providing a local parenting and play center in each village, identifying and training a local lay teacher and establishing grassroots community village parents’ committees to participate in planning and conducting appropriate development programs and activities.

Household Reading Sites Project

EEF is funding Peking University Professor Zizhou Wang’s Household Reading Site (HRS) project, which aims to increase reading access and improve literacy among rural children by placing shelves of books in selected rural families and establishing neighborhood reading centers in Chinese villages. The HRS project seeks to tackle an increasingly dire social problem that accompanies China’s rapid urbanization – the crisis of “left-behind” children (Rozelle & Hell, 2020). In search of better job opportunities, many rural adults migrate to cities and leave their children behind. There are about 70 million left-behind children in China, and they experience various effects of poverty, including poor
quality of education (Tong, Yan, & Kawachi, 2019). Researchers from the Stanford Rural Education Action Program found that almost half of the left-behind children in the poorest central and western parts of China had dropped out of school by Grade 9 (Rozelle & Hell, 2020). They cautioned that the high dropout rates may increase unemployment and widen inequality, which could lead to serious implications nationally and even internationally. One manifestation of disparities in education is rural children’s significant lack of access to suitable and adequate reading materials to develop their reading skills and interests. More than 70% of children in impoverished rural areas had access to only 10 or less extracurricular books a year and nearly 20% had none (Zhong, 2018). Recognizing this barrier in reading and literacy development, the HRS project aims to make reading materials easily accessible to rural children by creating neighborhood reading centers in selected households. HRS has identified a total of 15 villages to implement the intervention. At each village, 5 households are selected to receive a bookshelf and age-appropriate reading materials for children in that household and neighboring families. Selected families are trained on how to run the household-based library to offer convenient access to books and foster a culture of reading among neighborhood children.

STEM Challenge in China and USA

Partnering with the Li Geng Sheng Project (LGS) in China, Evergreen developed a STEM challenge for kids in China and the USA between May through August 2022. This challenge was modeled and adapted from the content and instruction from the 2022 Fluor Challenge created by Science Buddies. LGS translated the Fluor Challenge from English into Chinese and administered the challenge in China, including introduction seminars, coordination of teams, organizing judges, evaluation, and presenting awards in China. Evergreen partnered with LGS on this project by coordinating with the EDNova Academy in the USA who did the same Fluor Challenge in parallel. Evergreen plans to use this opportunity to set up online exchanges between China and US student participants to share their STEM ideas, experiences, process, and results. STEM projects have been an important project focus for Evergreen: Evergreen’s partnership with
LGS provides additional opportunities to continue Evergreen support for STEM project initiatives in rural China.

Peking University Rural Library STEM projects

One of Evergreen’s projects under Peking University Education Foundation Prof Wang’s Collaborated with the Rural Library Program at Beijing University. Prof. Wang led the project which held 2 series projects covering more than 100 STEM activities in 14 libraries in rural China. Evergreen granted part of material and activity costs, and supported Peking University groups to attend conferences and meetings.

Evergreen supported rural library development efforts by providing travel funds for members of the Private Library Research Group of the Information Management Department of Peking University to attend conferences and meetings promoting rural library topics. A meeting from October 28 to 31, 2022 was held to promote the high-quality development of the rural and community library industry attended by the Private Library Research Group of the Information Management Department of Peking University, the Love Reading Foundation, the Xinhe Foundation, and the Wanjia Library co-sponsored the first national “Roundtable for the Development of Rural and Community Libraries.” The meeting was held in Xiamen and organized by the Fujian Bird’s Nest Public Welfare Service Center for Student Aid, Fujian Xiashu Student Aid Public Service Center and Xiamen Bird’s Nest Reading Project. A total of 41 representatives from 39 institutions participated in this meeting, where they learned about their operating models and ways of participating in social governance. The participants visited local grassroots non-governmental libraries, such as Xiamen Gangtou Firefly Public Library, Gaodian Public Library, and New Xiamen People’s Library. The meeting included keynote reports, round table discussions and other activities. In-depth discussions and exchanges were conducted on the current situation and future of rural and community libraries in China. Discussion focused on the role and significance of libraries in community governance and rural revitalization, and how to build rural and community libraries.

Summer Workshops

In 2022, EEF and LGS collaborated with three high school students to bring robotics to Tonghe Primary School, Shacheng No.4 Middle School, and Tongfu South Street No.1 Middle School. The three high school students created a curriculum for the six-week long workshop which introduced students to the Engineering Design Process, which is a structured approach of problem solving by developing creative solutions based on the failures of past iterations. After completing several guided exercises in building a basic robot and programming with sensor input, students were tasked with completing some missions on their own. The students exhibited high levels of engagement and demonstrated creativity and perseverance in their work. Teacher Liu (in China) reflected on the class: “At the beginning the kids had no idea what robotics was, now they can write code which controls the robot to accomplish a designated task. They have made tremendous strides that would not have been possible without the very patient explanation and guidance from the teachers. We will definitely continue with the program so that more kids will have opportunities to learn about robotics and cultivate their interest in.”