Jinjiang, one of the most rapidly growing cities in East China's Fujian Province, is facing stern challenges as the gap between the rich and poor is growing fast.

Huang Changfu, 39, a poor disabled farmer living with his sick wife and three daughters in a borrowed, cramped room, is among the poorest in urgent need of help.

Huang now is expected to be able to build his own house with financial support offered by a local non-governmental charity organization in Jinjiang.

Like Huang's family, 56 poor families with disabled members living in Jinjiang, are becoming the first batch of beneficiaries to each receive relief funds of 30,000 yuan (US$3,600) in a charity housing project for low-income disabled people. It is being initiated by the Jinjiang Charity Federation, the nation's first county-level non-governmental charity organization.

The project, administered in cycles, which is predicted to be finished at the end of 2007, will help solve housing problems for poor disabled people in the city, said clerks with the federation.

Since it was founded in December 2002, Jinjiang Charity Federation has supplied relief assistance as an important complement to the public poverty relief measures taken by the local government, said Jinjiang Mayor Yang Yimin at a news conference on "Jinjiang Charity Day" held over the weekend.

"For the city's 120,000 above-60-year-old people, 16,000 poor disabled persons and other people who need relief services, the government's assistance is far from enough," he said.

By early this month, the federation had collected an endowment of 110.58 million yuan (US$13.4 million), mainly from local enterprises. About 23.39 million yuan (US$2.8 million) has been spent on a number of public welfare projects, such as helping the destitute and disabled improve their living conditions and in medical care, assisting poor students to return to school and building public welfare establishments in the city.

(China Daily December 20, 2004)