EACH year thousands of children in China miss school because they are too poor to pay for textbooks, exercise books and school fees.
Many who are lucky enough to receive education have to risk their lives studying in buildings that have been declared as dangerous and ready to 'collapse at any time'.
The mission of this year's Operation Santa Claus is to bring children living in poverty to school, to rebuild crumbling campuses and to improve education development in China.
One of the two beneficiaries this year of the annual fund-raising drive by RTHK Radio 3 and the South China Morning Post is Sowers Action, the charitable agency set up in Hong Kong in 1993 to improve education in China.
The group needs $2.7 million to complete at least 15 projects.
Sowers Action - which organises 'Walk to Guangzhou' marathons in which participants have to finish a 200-kilometre cross-border trek starting from Sha Tin in five days - hopes to ensure that all children on the mainland will go to school eventually.
At present it sponsors 7,000 primary students from 390 schools in Yangshan county, Guangdong, and Baojing, Rucheng and Sangzhi counties in Hunan.
