About Us
Ombres Chinoises (Chinese Shadows) is a non-profit, non-political, non-religious civil society organization based in Geneva (Switzerland). The initiators of Ombres chinoises (Véronique Trolliet, Valentino Aricci and Michele Albertoni) have lived in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, China.
Our objective is to collect, manage and distribute funds to support humanitarian projects helping underprivileged children.
Ombres Chinoises activities are focused, but not limited, to Yunnan, one of the poorest areas of China.
How are we active?
Our priority is to support local associations which have good experience and an excellent knowledge of the reality. Our role is to collect funds all around the world, to distribute them and, thanks to our personal presence in this region, to make sure then that they will be used purposefully. Ombres Chinoises does not perceive any commission payments for that. We are all dynamic volunteer and we really want to help these children. The projects we support are all related to childhood: with priority to education and health.
Yunnan: the children that do not exist
Education difficulties are present throughout the Yunnan province. The great poverty of certain families prevents the schooling of children who, without instruction, must start their working lives very young. In spite of government efforts, which limited taxes on schooling, most children still do not have access to public education. This is the case for many children issued from migrating families that do not meet all burocratic criteria for free access to the public instruction. The only possibility for education for many of them is private school. This solution remains unfortunately prohibitively expensive for poorer families to send the children to school. Moreover, as a result of government policies aimed at restricting population growth, families with more than two children must pay a significant fee. Therefore, many children remain undeclared. Officially these children do not exist: they have no identification documents without which they can receive no access to public school. We have thus decided to create this association to assist underprivileged children to get a better future.
Ombres chinoises is an association as defined under Art. 60ff. of the Swiss Civil Code (CC).
