SHENZHEN Project Care, a citywide campaign dedicated to helping the needy and the disadvantaged, launched its 21st edition Saturday with a Spring Festival reunion meal event that distributed nearly 2,000 sets of reunion meals across the city, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported.

The event also sent Chinese New Year greetings to frontline medical workers, moral models, sanitation workers, and children with special health care needs.

The project is expected to carry out over 2,400 caring activities in five major categories throughout the year, an increase of 14.3% year on year.

As a key activity of Shenzhen Project Care, the reunion meal event has been held for 21 years. This year, the meals include a wider variety of products including agricultural products such as rice, snow fungus, mushrooms, and sausages that come from rural areas that receive paired-up aid from Shenzhen.

The event has also seen an increasing number of enterprises, institutions, citizens, and volunteers lending a helping hand as well as more people receiving assistance.

Seven enterprises have become partners of this year’s reunion meals event, and nearly 2,000 volunteers from across Shenzhen have signed up to participate.

Yuan Jiayu, a young volunteer born after 2000, has helped deliver the reunion meals for many years. Another volunteer, 77-year-old Zhang Fukun, has been a fixture at the event since 2003. “I hope to keep delivering the reunion meals for many years to come,” he said.

Taxi driver Wang Zhongtang, a member of the taxi delivery fleet, has taken part in the event for five or six years. “Public welfare activities like this are popular at our company,” Wang said. “Many employees have signed up.”

“This is the second time that I’ve received the reunion meals,” said a female sanitation worker surnamed Yang. “I’ve often felt care and goodwill from society since I came to Shenzhen in 1993. I am truly grateful for receiving rice, cooking oil, and other daily necessities.”

(Zhang Yu, Zhou Junshu)