HONG KONG- For the sake of supporting the impoverished children in Mainland China, some 2,100 senior citizens have fasted for eight hours in a World Vision’s fundraising campaign.

Co-organized by World Vision Hong Kong, Hong Kong Baptist Hospital Au Shue Hung Health Centre and Radio Television Hong Kong Channel Five, the "Senior’s 8-hour Famine" fundraising campaign this year has successfully raised 1.8 millions on June 22. The donation will be used to finance World Vision’s education project in Mainland China. This campaign can also show the contribution of seniors to the society.

In the past 16 years, World Vision’s "Senior’s 8-hour Famine" fundraising campaign has raised over 18.9 millions Hong Kong dollars. The number of participants has also seen increasing from a few hundreds at the beginning to a few thousands today. Guizhou, Guangdong, Guangxi, Jiangxi, Yunnan, Ningxia and Xinjiang are some of the regions that have received the funding and developed education programs for children.

Among all the participants in the campaign, 33 of them are over 90 years old. A few senior celebrities have joined and showed support to them. The chairman of the Elderly Commission of the Hong Kong government Dr. Edward Leong suggested that not only the campaign has showed the contribution of seniors to the society, but has it also trained them to become stronger in their will of living.

Indeed, many of the senior participants have experienced the lack of education due to poverty when they were young. Therefore, they understand the importance of education to the future of children and are inspired to sacrifice themselves for the fundraising project.

[Editor’s note: Timothy Li in Hong Kong has reported for this article.]