Who We Are
Educate a girl today and she will create lasting change
One Girl, One Village at a Time - Many Generations.
Empowering village girls through education transforms families and communities for generations.
History
The Guanlan Scholarship, founded in 2000 by Dr. Seeberg, has empowered village girls through education. After a keynote at Shaanxi Normal University, Dr. Seeberg discovered girls in nearby villages often left school after grade 3. As a result, witnessing the change in villagers’ views when girls returned to school inspired her to act.
“In 2000, for just $10, I could help a girl return to school, shift how villagers view her, and enable a better future. With the help of a local colleague, I was able to fund the Scholarship and send 10 girls back to grade 4″
– Dr. Vilma Seeberg .
Ten years later, China’s rapid economic changes hit our remote village hard. Yet girls struggled to stay in school, whether left behind in villages or attending segregated migrant schools in cities where their parents worked.
In 2008, a successful local son from the village joined our efforts to expand the Scholarship. Sharing our vision, he now leads a partner non-governmental organization in the area.
“In 2000, for just $10, I could help a girl return to school, shift how villagers view her, and enable a better future. With the help of a local colleague, I was able to fund the Scholarship and send 10 girls back to grade 4″
– Dr. Vilma Seeberg .
Ten years later, China’s rapid economic changes hit our remote village hard. Yet girls struggled to stay in school, whether left behind in villages or attending segregated migrant schools in cities where their parents worked.
In 2008, a successful local son from the village joined our efforts to expand the Scholarship. Sharing our vision, he now leads a partner non-governmental organization in the area.
Founders
Vilma "Guanlan Mama"
PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER
Dr. Seeberg is the President and Founder of Guanlan Scholarship Foundation. She founded the Foundation in 2000. The Sisters know Dr. Seeberg as Guanlan Mama.
Pang Baoliang
NGO Partner
He directs our partner NGO at Shaanxi Children’s Benevolent Aid Center. He manages the awards in Anjinggou and surrounding towns where villagers had migrated, including the “urban village” in Xi’an.
Zoë Guanlan
CO-FOUNDER
Zoe Guanlan Seeberg is the daughter of Dr. Seeberg, after whom the Scholarship is named. While she goes by Zoe in the US, she's known as Guanlan by the Sisters.
Life in Anjinggou Village
In Anjinggou, families have struggled to survive by farming the steep Qinglin mountain slopes for centuries. Since the 2000’s, young parents have been leaving for day-jobs in nearby towns and cities, while the children remained behind with grandparents and attend underfunded very basic rural schools.
Since the mid-2010s, most of the children have followed their parents to the cities. Branded as “outsiders” without local residency, they are pushed into second-rate migrant schools and grow up in crowded “urban villages,” excluded from basic public services.
At high school age, the children face a difficult transition in order to continue schooling. They must return to their home county to test into and attend an urban senior secondary boarding school, a disruptive change for youth caught between the city and the countryside.
Life in Anjinggou Village
In Anjinggou, families have struggled to survive by farming the steep Qinglin Mountain slopes for centuries. Since the 2000’s, young parents have been leaving for day-jobs in nearby towns and cities, while the children remained behind with grandparents and attend underfunded very basic rural schools.
Since the mid-2010s, most of the children have followed their parents to the cities. Branded as “outsiders” without local residency, they are pushed into second-rate migrant schools and grow up in crowded “urban villages,” excluded from basic public services.
At high school age, the children face a difficult transition in order to continue schooling. They must return to their home county to test into and attend an urban senior secondary boarding school, a disruptive change for youth caught between the city and the countryside.
Guanlan Sister Stories
Dang Yating
a star scholar
See what 8 years of our Scholarship can do!
In 2022, Yating gained admission to the Graduate School of Law at China Northwest University, a leading comprehensive national university, where she started her law degree in September 2023.
She wrote,
“I have good news to share. I was just admitted to Law School!
I remember two years ago, I told Guanlan Mama that I wanted to study law. Now my dream has come true. I’m very happy. I wanted to make sure to tell Guanlan Mama who has been with me since the sixth grade and supported my schooling since then. I really love her very much and thank her very much.”
When She Started…
At age 11, Yating’s undocumented status and family background made schooling difficult. But, determined to succeed, she pursued higher education and was admitted to a national university.
Her parents were subsistence farmers high up in the mountains. As a result, her older sister, who had had to leave school early, helped pay for her schooling. She was determined from early on to study and score high on the senior secondary and then national college entrance exams — and she did. Hence, she was admitted to a national university.
Meet Shan Dangdang
When She Started…
Shan Dangdang was given away as a young girl to a man with mental illness to keep house for him and his father. Her birth grandmother had died very early, her grandfather had been old, frail and sick, and her parents had abandoned them and her.
In 2013, Dangdang, who was abandoned by her parents, joined the Scholarship. Every year, Pang Baoliang had to persuade her guardians to allow her to continue. She didn’t give up.
But Now…
In 2017, Dangdang graduated from vocational school.
By 2018, she started an internship at a private kindergarten. Now, she’s a confident young teacher, paying it forward.
Here she is, do you recognize her standing confident as a young teacher before village kids like herself in kindergarten? She changed her destiny and is paying it forward to the next generation.
Meet Guo Yangyang, 2021
In 2021 she was a grade 6 primary student. There were three children in her family. Her dad broke his leg and arm while working in construction, so he was out of work. Her mother is a housewife and tends the little plot of crops and vegetables to feed the family. Her brother is in grade 3. Her older sister is a freshman in university.
Our Shaanxi Renai Childrens Ctr. team brought the scholarship funds to her village home along with winter clothes and other life necessities on the annual visits during the pandemic. She continues in junior secondary school.
Meet Dang Yang, 2019
“College has given me the space to show myself and a platform to pursue my dream. Without your help empowering village girls through education, I wouldn’t have had the chance to experience this wonderful university life or receive this professional higher education. Thank you for giving me hope for an education. My desire for learning was like an eagle with broken wings; your arrival gave me the wings to fly and grow in the ocean of knowledge. I will repay you with my achievements, live up to your expectations, and be a useful person for society. Now I have the courage to face challenges, overcome setbacks, and become a strong, true person. We may encounter twists, difficulties, and hard times, but with perseverance and firm resolve, we will blossom all the way to the other side of success.”
– Excerpt from Dang Yang’s 2017 annual letter.
Dang Yang comes from a family of seven. Her mother has a mental illness and her father, the sole earner in the whole family, has a physical disability. By empowering village girls through education with the Guanlan Scholarship, she has graduated from secondary school. She was admitted to a nursing program in college.
Meet Jing He, 2019
Jing He’s family’s lives in extreme poverty. Her parents are illiterate small farmers. Her mother has a mental illness, her brother is blind, and her father does unskilled migrant labor which barely supports the family. In addition, her grandmother’s recent illness and surgery threw the family into severe medical debt.
Her smile shows her gratitude for the Scholarship. By empowering village girls through education, she has been able to study hard, and her neat, beautiful calligraphy has been honored with awards.
Her dream is to become a teacher in the future.
Meet Yu Yan, 2019
Yu Yan lives with her grandparents in their old mud brick house on a remote mountain top in Anjinggou far away from her Junior secondary school. Her family is extremely poor. She, her mother, and her grandmother have a mental disability. Ten years ago, her father took her disabled mother with him to the city to work, and they haven’t been heard from since, leaving his young daughter with her disabled grandparents to fend for themselves in the mountains.
Yu Yan dropped out of school for a few years to help her grandparents with the farmstead and housework.
With our support, she returned to school in 2019.
