Severely disabled woman lifts herself out of poverty and finds prosperity by raising rabbits with targeted assistance from the village committee director
"If the village committee director hadn't given me 10 pairs of breeding rabbits last year, I don't know what year I would have been able to escape poverty, let alone think about building a house." On January 11, Shi Yuhong, a severely disabled woman who stands only 1.2 m tall and lives in Zhenghe Village, Hemian Town, Naxi District, Luzhou City, Sichuan Province, happily told this writer. In 2015, by raising meat rabbits at home, Shi Yuhong achieved a net income of nearly 60,000 yuan, not only escaping poverty in one stroke and throwing off the "poverty cap," but this year she has also begun to consider converting her three dirt-walled tile-roofed houses into brick-and-tile houses.
Shi Yuhong feeding meat rabbits.
The fundamental change in her family's life brought about by raising rabbits would not have been possible for Shi Yuhong without the assistance of Ren Wenyou, director of the Zhenghe Village Committee and a major meat rabbit breeder. In January 2015, to help disabled people become prosperous, Zhenghe Village in Hemian Town held a training session on rabbit-raising techniques for disabled people organized by village committee director Ren Wenyou himself, and each disabled person was given 1-5 pairs of breeding rabbits free of charge depending on their disability grade. At the rabbit-raising training session, Shi Yuhong studied the techniques earnestly and received 5 pairs of breeding rabbits as a gift.
"Without Director Ren's assistance, my rabbit farm could not have reached this scale." To help Shi Yuhong's rabbit farm develop rapidly and set up an advanced model of rabbit raising in the whole village, Ren Wenyou planned the site for her farm many times, guided her in scientifically building the rabbit farm, and during the initial stage of raising rabbits came to Shi Yuhong's rabbit farm every week to guide scientific feeding. When the meat rabbits were ready for market, Ren Wenyou even came to her door and transported Shi Yuhong's rabbits free of charge to Luzhou to sell to traders. After a year of Ren Wenyou's tireless assistance, in 2015 Shi Yuhong's rabbit-raising income reached 60,000 yuan, and she still had more than 300 rabbits on hand at present.
Today, the road to prosperity that Shi Yuhong has taken by raising rabbits with Ren Wenyou's assistance has become a model for the villagers to learn from, and many villagers have come to her to learn rabbit-raising techniques and buy high-quality breeding rabbits.
"Before 2015, there were only a little more than 10 households in Zhenghe Village raising rabbits. After a year of Ren Wenyou's assistance, the number of newly developed rabbit-raising households has reached 42, including 11 households with disabled family members. In the future, this road to prosperity through rabbit raising will become the choice for more people seeking prosperity." Shu Yi, Party branch secretary of Zhenghe Village, told this writer.