Guizhou village leaves no one behind with disability care center

As a new endeavor to eradicate poverty, a village in the hilly Guizhou province has been pioneering a province-wide program in which disabled villagers are supported through centralized care centers.

Four years ago, Yuliangxi village in the northeast part of Guizhou set up the province's first specialized nursery for the disabled.

The facility is staffed by six volunteers, including village officials and other members of the Communist Party of China's local branch.

With its own clinics, canteen and rehabilitation room, it offers free services that have helped relieve 23 poor families from the need to provide intensive care and attention to their disabled family members.

This allows others in the family to seek job opportunities elsewhere to earn money and relieve financial pressures.

Yang Zailian, the Party chief of the village of 4,600 farmers, was a major advocate for the program.

The reform-minded farmer was elected in 2004 and has since pushed for a shift in local farming to more lucrative cash crops like watermelon and strawberries, and promoted the husbandry of fish and pigs.

With Yang's leadership, the village formed eight rural cooperatives and a mutual-aid program as part of an attempt to address the root cause of local poverty and create new incentive for entrepreneurial farmers.

As villagers got richer, the Party secretary was quick to find families with disabled members continued to struggle.

"On the road to Xiaokang, no one shall be left behind," he said, referring to the central government's effort to build China into a "moderately prosperous society in all aspects" by 2021.

Yang started his social experiment in 2013 in an attempt to tackle disability-induced poverty.

As part of an early endeavor, he launched an initiative to provide welfare jobs such as street sweepers, and cooks and janitors at the cooperatives.