Beijing Women's Federation

China has been striving for reaching the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and meeting the targets outlined in the 13^th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020). The country also spares no effort for a decisive victory in the battle against poverty. Women's federations at all levels in Beijing have thoroughly studied and implemented General Secretary Xi Jinping's important instructions on poverty alleviation, implemented the decisions and deployments of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the State Council, the municipal Party committee, and the municipal government. They regarded cooperation and pair-up assistance in anti-poverty work as a glorious political task.

 

Women's federation cadres and women from all walks of life in Beijing are fighting with all their strength, dedicating themselves, thinking deeply, and doing everything in detail for the same mission. Experts from various fields gave wonderful lectures on women's health, e-commerce and legal affairs, giving poverty-stricken women confidence. Training of Beijing traditional crafts making brought energy to women. Women entrepreneurs in Beijing made donations which bring warmth to impoverished women and female college students ... All these moves are impressive and worthy of praise.

 

According to the general plan of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council about eliminating absolute poverty and the requirements of the All-China Women's Federation and the CPC Beijing Municipal Committee, the Beijing Women's Federation (BWF) has fulfilled its tasks of supporting cooperation between eastern and western areas on poverty alleviation and pair-up assistance.

 

Targeted Poverty Alleviation

 

Beijing has been arranged to offer assistance to 90 impoverished counties in Tibet, Xinjiang Uygur and Inner Mongolia autonomous regions, Qinghai, Hebei and Hubei provinces.

 

The BWF focuses on targeted poverty alleviation through rolling out an implementation scheme and a three-year action plan, signing an exchange and cooperation framework agreement with women's federations in impoverished areas and promoting pair-up assistance relations between 16 districts' women's federations in Beijing and 73 impoverished counties' women's federations.

 

The federation's leaders have led teams to conduct surveys about the needs of supported areas to help them escape poverty. The federation also organized 16 expert groups to provide 160 training sessions for 13,120 people, teaching knowledge and skills to women in impoverished areas. It invited 280 women who played a leading role in the battle against poverty from impoverished areas to Beijing to participate in training on innovation and entrepreneurship.

 

The Beijing Women and Children Foundation has mobilized people to raise funds and donated 4.19 million yuan (US $598,751) to impoverished women and female college students in the aided areas in the past two years.

 

Housekeeping Drives Poverty Alleviation

 

There is a great market demand in Beijing's housekeeping industry and more than 95% of housekeepers are not local people. The BWF has been active in establishing housekeeping business brands by cooperating with municipal human resource and social security and commerce bureaus to designate seven companies as "capital's Jinguo (women) housekeeping service companies."

 

 

The BWF has built a platform for poverty alleviation through housekeeping by organizing impoverished women to work in Beijing in an orderly manner. At present, it has cooperated with 10 impoverished counties and cities and signed 58 assistance agreements, providing job opportunities to 300,000 housekeepers in Beijing. This effort has both satisfied the needs of Beijing's families and offered jobs to poverty-stricken women, supporting their families to get rid of poverty.

 

 

The Beijing March 8^th Women Service Center has established long-term cooperative relationship with 13 poor counties and cities in terms of homemaker dispatching and training. The center offers free skill training and recommends trainees for employment in Chengde and Baoding cities in Hebei, adjoining Beijing, which allows them go to Beijing for short-term housekeeping services during slack seasons in farming, and return to their hometown to work in busy seasons.

 

 

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, BWF has cooperated with certain government authorities to learn and meet enterprises' demands and help companies to tackle the difficulties of complicated and slow loan procedures. It has also led enterprises to conduct online training, interviews, contract signing, payment and other services, ensuring housekeepers enter Beijing smoothly and resume work steadily.

 

Consumption Boosts Income

 

The BWF has mobilized the Beijing Women Entrepreneurs Association and outstanding women entrepreneurs to purchase products and services produced by women in impoverished areas, organized enterprises from Beijing's supported areas to participate in the Beijing Women and Children's Industry Expo, and set up a special booth to focus on promoting, displaying, and selling products from poor areas.

 

 

Rural production bases that are supported by women's federations have played an important role under the principle of pairing up to help at least one product and one agricultural good in at least one region enter Beijing for sale through an e-commerce store.

 

E-commerce platforms were established to support agricultural cooperatives. For example, the women's federation guided, encouraged, and supported the Green Dragonfly Professional Cooperative in Tongzhou District, the Beijing Yinongyuan Ecological Farming Professional Cooperative, and the Yunmengyuan E-commerce Company in Miyun District to set up a special channel on their platforms.

 

 

On the one hand, the cooperation promotes good agricultural products to be planted in the aided areas and on the other it leads to purchases of specialties and handicrafts from poor areas to help producers increase income. During the COVID-19 epidemic, BWF helped to sell 38 tons of Hubei's agricultural products worth nearly 700,000 yuan (US $99,820).

 

Handicrafts Play Key Part

 

The Beijing Qiaoniang (Smart Lady) Handicraft Development Promotion Association has participated deeply in the fight against poverty. The association's leader Xia Hua led the "Eve · Chinese Handicraft Workshop" to promote traditional craft by attracting 13,000 impoverished women in remote areas in Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces to join the craftswomen's team and selling products via market fairs and online platforms where some craftswomen became celebrities through presentations of traditional handicraft skills. These women are able to work and take care of the family at the same time.

 

 

The association's director Wang Huifang opened a Qiaoniang studio in Zhuolu County, Hebei Province, and brought such intangible cultural heritage items as Beijing-style Embroidery to Wuchuan County in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region for order-based poverty alleviation. Wang has also trained in the past two years more than 3,300 impoverished women in their hometowns, helping them increase their income.

 

The Qiaoniang trainers teach professional skills to the aided areas every year, helping to design and develop handmade products with regional characteristics, and improving women's development capabilities.

 

During the epidemic, women's federations at city and district levels established a platform to promote the resumption of work and production and to contribute to ensuring victory in the fight against poverty.

 

The BWF will further leverage its advantages in mobilizing private enterprises and social organizations to assist impoverished villages that have not yet been lifted out of poverty. Under the coordination of the headquarters for Beijing pairing assistance to Xinjiang in Hotan, BWF chooses the content of assistance based on its own situation, clarifies the direction of assistance, realizes effective connection between poverty alleviation and local needs, and establishes reasonable projects. Focusing on vulnerable groups, such as impoverished single mothers, girls who dropped out of school, and left-behind children, and carrying out targeted assistance, BWF earnestly takes up its responsibility in the fight against poverty.