What we do
We support children and youth to reach their full potential!
Our programs will help children achieve their full potential through educational scholarships, subsidies, and more.
We Find & Fund
We directly connect with schools to identify bright students who need help to continue education.
We Offer Training
Preschool teachers are often underpaid and pressed into their jobs with minimal training. We aim to provide for them.
We Do Our Research
The scope of our vision is vast; we attend seminars, analyze statistics, and consult experts to ensure our approach remains data-driven.
We Provide
We offer financial aid, material subsidies, and nutritional subsidies to rural, underfunded schools.
We Reach Out
We visit prospective locations to expand our programs. We also check in on schools and students that we support to ensure that funding is being used efficiently and effectively.
We Volunteer
We’ve been pursuing our mission for thirty years, and our volunteers have never received a single dollar in recompense.
Our Programs
Preschool
We aim to “win at the starting line” by addressing urban-rural education discrepancies for children aged 3 to 5. Since the program’s inception 2019, we’ve trained over 300 preschool teachers in modern instructional techniques. Even so, preschool and kindergarten teachers are often severely underpaid; with the help of our subsidies, we hope to improve retention rate for more experienced instructors.
Our preschool program also provides textbooks, financial aid, and meal subsidies to schools across the mountainous Yunnan-Guizhou region. Though the program is comparatively new, we are rapidly expanding our operations.
High School
Providing scholarships to high school students is an essential part of SOAR scholarship program. SOAR scholarship recipients are those students with academic excellence who lack the funding to continue their high school education or vocational school education. Once awarded, the students will be sponsored $450/year for three years while in good academic standing. Students will be eligible to apply to the SOAR college scholarship if they are admitted to an accredited college or vocational college upon high school graduation.
Each year, SOAR sends out scholarship applications to students recommended by designated nominators who work in the school systems in underdeveloped counties in China. Applications are collected in SOAR’S Beijing office and then forwarded to our U.S. headquarters. The awarded students will receive their scholarships from the Beijing office via direct bank deposits to the students’ bank accounts. Students are required to send receipts back to SOAR once they receive the funds.
University
Our higher education program is designed for SOAR high/vocational school graduates admitted to universities and provincial colleges. Non-SOAR graduates must be recommended by SOAR nominators, then reviewed and approved by SOAR Scholarship Committee.
Each student receives in RMB equivalent to at least seven hundred U.S. dollars ($700) per year for a period of one to four years (or depending on years required for graduation). Sponsors may elect to support his/her selected students till graduation.
After sponsors inform SOAR Scholarship Committee of their student selection(s), and when their contribution is received, SOAR College Scholarship Sub-Committee will notify the recipients and proceed with the scholarship distribution process. As long as the sponsors do not change the recipient designation, and send in the contribution in time each year, SOAR will continue review and award the scholarship to the designated student(s).