Ningxia Center for Environment and Poverty Alleviation

Organisation name 

Ningxia Center for Environment and Poverty Alleviation

Country 

China

Contact details 

Website http://www.nxcepa.org/
Email cepaoffice@126.com

Financial resources

US$350,000 (2006)

Geographical focus

China/Asia

Issue focus

Poverty alleviation, environment, health, education, technology, social exclusion

Key achievements

• Implemented aid projects to bring direct benefits to 38,950 people
• Works closely with rural communities to develop capacity and local solutions
• Projects aim to resolve key challenges of gender inequality, poverty and the environment

Mission

Ningxia Center for Environment and Poverty Alleviation (the Center)'s mission is to support rural communities in overcoming the interconnected problems of gender inequality, poverty, and the environment. Using a participatory approach, the Center works with individual villages to increase their capacity to identify problems and develop solutions that work in a local context. It then provides financial and technical support to assist the villagers in implementing these projects, mainly in the fields of microfinance, the environment, and education.

Background

Founded in 1998, the Center is the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region's largest independent Chinese NGO. Its activities include:

• Supporting local communities in improving their livelihood strategies and protecting the natural environment while promoting the coordination of regional administrations
• Using microfinance to support gender equality and women's development
• Using participatory approaches to increase local communities' self development capacities
• Developing skills and technology in order to increase our organisational capacity
• Offering technical support and service to other organisations involved in promoting sustainable development
• Increasing cooperation and exchange and promoting resource sharing
• Introducing nine community integrated development projects under the joint sponsorship of Amity Foundation, Asia Foundation and Alcan Ningxia Aluminum Company Limited
• Promoting and constructing various information platforms to increase opportunities for interaction between international and domestic NGOs, and government organisations, with the aim to influence the formulation of government policies

Partnerships

Ningxia partners with other NGOs including Amity Foundation, academic institutions including College of Humanities and Development of the China Agricultural University, local governments and development organisations including the Alcan Ningxia Aluminum Group.

Impact achieved

The Center's successes include:

• An education project which has helped and funded 2,590 children to return to school
• Implementing aid projects to bring direct benefits to 38,950 people - of these, more than 90 per cent are peasants from the middle and lower income group
• Supporting the establishment of 32 peasants associations, co-operatives and cultural troupes and, with the help of research projects, set up research and association networks involving the participation of peasants
• A microcredit programme with credit issued of US$2.5 million, a recovery rate of more than 99.9 per cent
• Establishing a participatory project demonstration site in Yanchi County: the site hosted 60 sets of visiting study groups with a total of 1,200 guests and organised four larger scale international seminars