Luo Songsong

    songsongluo@126.com

    SMALL charity groups and organizations are hoping to get more attention and developmental support at the second annual China Charity Fair, which opened Saturday in Shenzhen.

    The number of exhibitors has climbed to 828 this year, compared to last year’s 544, perhaps heightening the common problem facing most small exhibitors: a lack of financial backing.

    Chen Lan, the Taiwanese founder of the Shenzhen Xinhai Rehabilitation Center for Special Children, in Nanshan District, said she’s had to pay for children’s treatment out of her own pocket after parents left without paying, and has spent more than 1 million yuan (US$163,299) helping children with special needs over the past decade.

    “I have sympathy for those parents because I used to be one of them, but the costs of rent, teaching materials and labor are not small expenditures for me,” said Chen, whose 15-year-old daughter is autistic.

    Another group, founded in 2011 and called Love Save Pneumoconiosis — a lung disease often caused by inhalation of dust in mines — focuses on the health of migrant workers all over the country. The group has collected more than 7 million yuan in the past two years but the money is stretched very thin by the group’s efforts to help 6 million pneumoconiosis patients in rural areas of China.

    “A patient can be cured only after receiving lung treatment that costs at least 10,000 yuan, and the group has not received enough attention as it should,” said Xiang Zhaolin, a volunteer with the charity organization.

    Yang Xiaojuan, director of a social welfare center in the city of Wuzhong in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, said fundamental roles in running charities have been transferred to social organizations from the government.

    “Charity, as a brand of Wuzhong, has brought a lot of benefits to its citizens, and we hope more enterprises will invest in the city to improve the overall quality of life there,” Yang said.

    The most recent annual report published by the China Charity & Donation Information Center said aggregate donations nationwide in 2012 reached 81.7 billion yuan, and 60 percent of that came from enterprises.