3/20 – How Compassionate Education Reached more than 600,000 Children

This story is the third instalment of 20 Years, 20 Wins – a series highlighting ACTAsia’s biggest milestones in celebration of its 20th anniversary. 

 

ACTAsia’s Caring for Life (CFL) education for children programme has reached more than 600, 000 children across China since 2012; a number that continues to grow. CFL education for children started with a single pilot school. Now, as ACTAsia turns twenty years old, the arc from one classroom to hundreds of thousands of children is one of the organisation’s clearest wins. 

From One Classroom to more than 600,000 Children

The Caring for Life education for children programme began as a pilot in five schools across the southern Chinese cities of Shenzhen and Zhuhai in the 2007 school year. At the time, this kind of teaching was completely novel within Asian classrooms Humane education – helping children understand that animals, people and the environment are intimately interconnected – was already established in the West (often under the banner of PSHE), but no equivalent existed in China. 

The success of the pilot schools lay not only in the rigorous curriculum, but in the relationships built with individual schools and teachers willing to try something new. Tang Guo-an Memorial School[TG1]  in Zhuhai was the first Caring for Life pilot school and took to the groundbreaking programme quickly: the school’s principal introduced a vegetable garden that children still plant, tend to and harvest today, growing directly out of the CFL lessons on environmental responsibility. From Tang-Guo-an Memorial School to the first five pilots, the CFL programme grew into a wider network of pioneer schools across China, each one delivering the six-year curriculum to its students year after year. 

What “Reach” Means 

A number as large as 600,000 can make ACTAsia’s CFL story feel abstract. Behind it are individual lessons taught, teachers trained, and children whose behaviour and outlook towards the environment, animals and others genuinely shifted. 

Teachers and leaders at CFL pioneer schools identify CFL as being part of a broader educational reform taking place in China: a shift away from the sole valuation of grades, toward an increased emphasis on behaviour, interpersonal skills and respect. Veteran teacher Mrs Zhou of Shanghai ECNU Minhang Hongqiao School, has observed the impact of CFL on teachers and students alike, describing a classroom where children and teachers meet on more equal footing and where students learn to notice and act on the needs of those around them. 

This kind of revolutionary shift has much to do with ACTAsia’s professionality and commitment from teachers, year after year. Tang Guo-an Memorial School is a case in point, with teacher Ms Luo reflecting that CLF changed her relationship with her students and to education. Since her school became the first CFL pioneer school, Ms Luo has trained university students, parent volunteers and schoolteachers nationwide, both in lectures and hands-on sessions. CFL also led her to form a parent volunteer lecturer group, take her own children to experience a farm, and give charity lessons to students in rural schools. As a result of her involvement with CFL, Ms Luo has gone from a single classroom teacher to someone shaping how CFL is taught nationally, training the trainers who will go on to reach children she will never personally teach. 

It is a pattern that repeats across every pilot school ACTAsia has worked with since the establishment of CFL, and it’s why the scale of 600,000 is so significant: it is the sum of teachers like Ms Luo multiplying their own reach far beyond a single classroom. Many of these teachers go on to become senior officials and school principals, carrying CFL’s approach into positions where they can shape policy for far more children still. 

Extending the Reach Online  

Not every child that CFL reaches is in a pioneer school. Since 2012, more than 1,200 online classes have been delivered to around 43,000 children in remote rural areas[TG1] , with local teachers stepping in to facilitate lessons guided by an ACTAsia online educator. For children whose schools sit far outside the pioneer network, this online reach has been the difference between no humane education at all and a real introduction to it.

20 Years 20 Wins 

Reaching more than 600,000 children represents thousands of transformed teachers, hundreds of engaged schools, and innumerable moments of children learning to care more deeply for animals, people and the environment. Twenty years on, Caring for Life continues to demonstrate that lasting change begins in the classroom and grows outward.

 

Support Compassionate Education 

What began in a single classroom has grown into a movement that has reached more than 600,000 children. Every donation helps ACTAsia train teachers, expand Caring for Life and inspire more young people to build a kinder future for animals, people and our planet.

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