Goals for a better future

People in the Liangshan mountainous area in Southwest China know the importance of education in breaking the spiral of poverty.

It's hard for rural students to compete with their urban counterparts, who enjoy better educational resources and greater opportunities stemming from college entrance examination performances, job opportunities and social capabilities.

To cope with the situation, the prefecture is determined to provide its students with every chance to realize their potential.

Tiedaobing Hope School in Puge county is following a path of cultivating a football culture.

Many of the Yi students have to commute on foot, over many kilometers, and help with household chores or even farmwork. Living at an altitude of nearly 2,000 meters, they tend to have better physical strength, says Huang Dinghua, the deputy principal.

The school, with the best soccer pitch in the county, now has a squad of boys and another of girls, each with 20 members aged between 8 and 11 years old.

The boy's team managed to make it to the final eight in a prefecture tournament comprised of 20 teams last June, just three months after it was set up. It was the only village primary school team in the competition.

Last autumn the school recruited a professional soccer coach and teacher. When Jiaba Haier, 26, took over the job, he discovered that many pupils had barely touched, let alone kicked, a football.

He let them play in informal teams at first to allow them to be comfortable on the ball before teaching them how to dribble, tackle and pass.

He tells anecdotes of star players, of how sport helped him to get into university and further his career, and also about how soccer training and competitions will bring them opportunities to go out and see the world at large.

The teacher believes that once there is, no pun intended, a clear goal, it's easier for the pupils to follow their dreams.

Huang also points out that training gives them all a sense of identity, of purpose and a common target.

She also adds that many, who come from poverty-stricken families with migrant worker parents who live away from home, tend to stay longer on the premises after school, or are enrolled as boarders, which keeps them in a productive environment.

According to Huang, the pupils enjoy campus life more because of their interest in soccer, and this gives them a confidence boost that will spill over into other areas.

Zhang Qiquan, who was sent by Longmatan district from the city of Luzhou, Sichuan province, to help the county's poverty alleviation efforts and take charge of education development, says they are planning to invest further in order to set up more teams in different schools, build more venues and send more teachers out for training.

The county is also seeking to link up with external resources to help local soccer talent with further studies and a route to a possible professional career in the sport.

It was Zhang Qiquan's eight colleagues, also sent from Luzhou, who kicked off the soccer training at Tiedaobing school last March.

The coaches, who were amateurs, taught themselves in their spare time and then trained the pupils. They also brought teams to Luzhou for friendly matches.