New | China’s NGOs plan campaign to help ‘left behind’ children after siblings’ suicides
Help groups urge local governments and social workers to cooperate to reach out to vulnerable group of migrant workers’ offspring
A group of NGOs is planning a campaign to help China’s 60 million “left behind” children, in light of the deaths of the four children who took their own lives after being left alone at home.
The NGOs, from provinces across the country, on Monday called for a database and emergency relief system to be set up for such children in rural areas.
They urged local governments and social workers to cooperate to share information and resources to better reach out to this vulnerable group of children.
“It is extremely urgent for us to take action. Otherwise, the Bijie tragedy will inevitably happen again,” said Dr Jin Jinping, director of Peking University’s Centre for Nonprofit Organisations.
Bijie is the city in impoverished southwestern Guizhou province, where the four siblings who committed suicide lived.
The NGOs’ proposal came a week after the children – a brother and his three younger sisters aged between five and 13 – swallowed pesticide in their three-storey house in Bijie’s Cizu village. The siblings died in hospital.