In order to fulfil the purpose of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects by 2020, ensure impoverished people to be out of the existing poverty line, and eliminate absolute poverty, 2019 was a vital period of the critical battle against poverty without gun-smoke, entering the final core stage. Recently, Country Garden Services has stayed committed to the critical battle against poverty. Centered on the headquarters, poverty alleviation work was unfolded to multiple national regions sequentially, forming the four-main modes between rural areas and companies in poverty alleviation of improving Party building poverty alleviation, education supporting study, employment poverty alleviation, and poverty alleviation through consumption, which stuck to targeted strategies and gave full play to companies and communities in targeted poverty alleviation.

Party building poverty alleviation: companies partnered with rural areas to implement targeted poverty alleviation assistance

Under the national condition of a weak economic development foundation in China’s rural areas and huge development differences, there were still 30 million poor rural residents in China while some rural villages have achieved a well-being level development. In an effort to help these poor rural areas and poor residents to shake off poverty, based on Party building, Country Garden Services practiced various methods, and carried out targeted partner assistance in poor counties and villages to make the ‘banner of the Communist Party of China’ assist in targeted poverty alleviation and lead rural revitalization.

Signed an exclusive agreement and promised targeted poverty alleviation. At present, Country Garden Services signed the agreement on Party building assistance with 7 provincial-level Party (General) Branches of poor villages in Yingde City, Guangdong Province, putting Party building poverty alleviation into the company’s agenda.

Built a household investigation team to fully prepare for targeted poverty alleviation. Country Garden Services organized Party members to found an investigation team that deepened understanding towards farmers through heart-to heart talk and understanding of farmers’ assistance demands. The company also formulated the ‘Target Poverty Alleviation Information Card of Country Garden Services Property Company Party Committee’, inputting these information cards to electronic system in standard version, which laid the foundation of targeted partner assistance.

Built a batch of partner assistance families to introduce more communities families into targeted poverty alleviation. Apart from mobilizing company staff, Country Garden Services also encouraged charitable property owners to made up ‘pairing families’ with 96 households registered as living under the poverty line in 7 villages in forms of ‘one-to-one household’, ‘many-to-one household’, and ‘one-to-many households’. In the partner assistance process, community families visited their assistance households, contrapuntally addressing the assistance demands for households registered as living under the poverty line and sending material and financial assistance.

Built an Party building activity room to improve Party building poverty alleviation base. Country Garden Services regarded the renovation of Party building activity rooms in countryside as an important task of Party building co-construction, and aimed to take activity rooms as positions to implement various popular assistance activities of Party members and masses, such as training, lectures, and free medical consultations to provide convenient services for them, and to strengthen powers of the Party Branch of CPC in rural areas for driving new impetus in poverty alleviation.

Among rural villages assisted by Country Garden Services, the ‘Beautiful Countryside Construction Demonstration Project’ in Hetou Village, Jiulong Town, Yingde City, Qingyuan City, Guangdong Province has achieved tremendous period accomplishments, and the modern ecology tourism agricultural sightseeing project has been put into an effect. On January 1, 2019, in order to expression its gratitude, the local office of Guangdong Province Committee of CPC published a ‘letter of appreciation’ for the Party Committee of Country Garden Services’s great emphasis and vigorous support.

In the process of Party building poverty alleviation, the company played the vanguard role of the Party members to partner assistance with rural villages, and mobilized community families to carry out partner assistance with households registered as living under the poverty line to achieve targeted pair-assistance, bringing hope of rebirth to poor households and painting a brand new picture for the countryside.

Access to education: ‘Five ‘One’ Actions’ helped impoverished students through partner assistance

‘Supporting education is a premise of helping the poor, and shaking off poverty is a premise of educating ignorance.’ If children in poor families accept good education, the ‘root of poverty’ of a family could be removed thoroughly. To ensure children in poor families have access to compulsory education is the baseline task of ‘Two Assurances and Three Guarantees’ in the critical battle against poverty. Under the advocacy of Country Garden, Country Garden Services vigorously carried out coordinate actions concerning access to education, making targeted partner assistance with impoverished students and achieving ‘Five ‘One’ Assistance’ to realize students’ dreams of obtaining education.

‘Five ‘One’ Assistance’ policy in poverty alleviation by education refers to ‘Making partner assistance with one needy student’ by supporting students aged from primary school to university in form of one-to-one partner assistance; ‘Participating in supporting education by one donation’, Country Garden Services proposed executives to donate voluntarily, and encouraged average employees to take an active part in donation, so as to help reduce the financial pressure of needy students; ‘Conducting one home visit’, Country Garden Services organized staff in partner assistance to have home visits with assistant members on holidays, and meet or have a meal with assistant children; ‘Fulfilling one achievable wish’, helpers tried their best to solve one practical difficulty according to assistant students’ true demands; And ‘having one communication every month’, helpers contacted recipient children by phone or WeChat to draw up growing plans and witness children’s progress.

In 2018, education supporting study projects accumulated 21,160 donations to implement partner assistance in Country Garden Services, with a total amount of more than RMB 800,000 yuan. These figures demonstrated that the company’s partners made grand contributions as well.

In the process of education supporting study, the company’s staff tried their best in different fields, partnered targeted assistance with needy students, and provided comprehensive and continuous concerns to recipients in life and spirit, leading poor students into a new life.

Employment poverty alleviation: cultivated employment skills and provided job opportunities

One of the current difficulties in poverty alleviation is that material supports can not lift poor population out of poverty thoroughly alone. For poor population, material supports are not long-term plans, just as the saying goes “teach others to fish and they will fish for a lifetime”. To enhance abilities of self-dependence and self-development for poor residents, Country Garden Services combined talent demands of the company’s development to support poor residents, provide technologies, and created more job opportunities, which absolutely practiced the idea of ‘teaching others to fish’.

Recently, Country Garden Services’s recruited teams and pre-employment training teams have regularly visited poor front-line areas of 14 countries in 9 provinces every week, conducting on-the-spot centralized recruitment and oriented recommendation, totaling over 8,000 job opportunities. Besides, Country Garden Services provided face-to-face pre-employment training and helped poor residents master basic job skills to get ready for employment.

By December 28, 2018, 340 people were employed in primary-level positions within the year, among them 60 households registered as living under the poverty line were employed, with a high employment rate of 70%, which truly helped disadvantaged population who has labor but no technique or has technique but no job, to achieve the concept of ‘the whole family get away from poverty with one gets a job’.

Employment poverty alleviation integrated job and talent demands, encouraged teachers to teach in rural areas, and provided job opportunities, which urged poor residents’ desires to overcome poverty as well as intrinsic powers of overcoming poverty from the heart, maximizing the prevention of returning to poverty.

Poverty alleviation through consumption: utilizing community platforms to open up sales channels for agricultural products

Although there are quality crops and potential industries in some underdeveloped areas, they suffer from sluggish economic development, which largely owing to the lack of appropriate sales channels. In response to this situation, Country Garden Services voluntarily guided and supported the development of characteristic industries in less-developed villages, and creatively introduced high-quality but unsaleable agricultural products into communities to meet owners’ consumption needs, which in the meantime promoted the industrial development of underdeveloped areas, effectively radiating local farmers to increase their incomes and acquire wealth, thus achieving mutually beneficial.

For example, ‘Xiaoguoguang’ apples from Wulian County, Shandong Province, were in vogue nationwide, whereas they gradually faded out of the fruit market due to special reasons in the 1980s and 1990s. Nowadays, the dismal and unpopular market for Xiaoguoguang apples causes tens of thousands of catties of apples encountering poor sales. Aimed at this condition, Country Garden Services partnered with Wulian County to implement assistance, linking local government and logistics enterprises, constructing industrial brands, and giving scope to community owners consumption capacity, and sold Xiaoguoguang apples into Country Garden communities in more than 100 cities across the country. More than 130,000 catties of apples were sold out, generating a sales revenue of more than RMB 1 million yuan and directly assisting 21 poor households through apple acquisitions.

In addition, those products that originally lacked of market ended up selling well in communities and were purchased by millions of owners, such as Dongxiang sheep with a total value of nearly RMB 150,000 yuan, white gourds and pumpkins from Hunan, and oranges from Shaoguan, Guangdong, embodying owners’ humanistic love and communities warmth.

Country Garden Services tried out new models of poverty alleviation, opened up smooth channels for product distributions, spared efforts to alleviate poverty through community consumption, and met community life demands with quality agricultural products. On the one hand, the company created brand recognition for agricultural products to define new connotation and vitality of products, boosting both market reputation and sales; On the other hand, the company helped improve the poverty alleviation chain, and linked with multiple social parties to participate together, giving farmers enough confidence to walk out a new path to get rid of poverty and become better off.

In the future, Country Garden Services will continue to optimize existing poverty alleviation models, continuously explore and innovate boldly, implement poverty alleviation assistance in accordance with local conditions, and adopt various forms such as developing rural tourism routes and developing rural e-commerce channels, so as to make more effective targeted measures on communities’ poverty alleviation and explore a community-featured targeted poverty alleviation road.