Partners

Board of Directors

Yushu Prefecture Ministry of Public Health
Qinghai Provincial Government
The People of Surmang
Wu Jieping Foundation
United Family Hospitals and Clinics
Peking Union Medical Center
Tshinghua University Hospital

We are dedicated to eliminating poverty in rural China, starting with our Pilot Project at Surmang. The critical path for the people in our catchment area is health promotion and the most critical aspect of health promotion is mother and child health.

Ownership and Participation

The key to building sustainable development in remote areas of China- and particularly remote ethnic Tibetan areas- is outreach. Outreach means that our beneficiaries have a sense of ownership and are partners in the design and implementation of our projects. Basically, when we come into an area with few resources and extreme poverty, we have to start walking on the road of partnership and empowerment, and avoid paternalism and other such arrogance, no matter how good our intentions and no matter how much local partners want to put us in that position.

We have done this through the process of participatory assessments (PRA) and also through building local capacity, as exemplified in our two doctors, Phuntsok and Drogha, and also in the development of a corps of Community Health Workers.

Partnership with the Chinese Government

In these poor, remote areas, sustainability in health promotion and poverty alleviation depends also on the government as well, since they have the primary responsibility providers of social welfare. In the history of our work, we have put a great deal of effort on finding good partners in the government, people and institutions who have a sincere and professional interest in working together. We believe we have succeeded in this effort, in the Qinghai Provincial Government, Vice Gov. Bai Ma, and in the Yushu Prefecture Ministry of Public Health.

The Yushu Prefecture Ministry of Public Health's cooperation was essential for the KAP public health survey we did in 2004, in which we found that the vast Surmang catchment area has among the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world.

People's University (Renmin Daxue)

We are also partnered with the People's University of Beijing, in the development of an archive of all Tibetan Language health promotion materials and the creation of a distance medical education project to support that. A major player in this process is both the Ministry of Health and the Tsinghua University Hospital. We have a continuing relationship with the Peking Union Medical Center, one of the most prestigious hospitals in China; they provided three doctors last year to teach the ALSO and NALS (life saving in obstetrics and neo-natal resuscitation) courses, the former being translated in Chinese by Dr. Gai, the head of their OBGYN Department. These courses were taught at the Yushu Prefecture Hospital and at our own clinic.

Wu Jieping Foundation

Surmang Foundation & Amara are partnered with the Wu Jieping Foundation to further their work in China. Wu Jieping is a partner that seeks to support SF's localized prototype, as well as Amara's sustainable and replicable network for rural health among the 30 million Chinese who earn less than ¥1/day (US14¢).

Both Wu Jieping and Surmang Foundation & Amara are committed to offering alternative systemic solutions to China's healthcare crisis, stemming from the idea that the government is the steward of public health and sustainability. We will work together we can offer these viable models based on Surmang Foundation's successful work in Qinghai.