Gwen Moore: Giving the Gift
of Learning

On a cold day in December 1995, Gwen Moore came across a story in The New York Times about economic development in China. Usually, the peripatetic management consultant never read The Times during the week, but something prompted her to buy the paper that day on the way home from a business trip. The purchase would change her life forever.

Today, she still doesn't know if it was the sad eyes of the two children in the photo with the story that touched her, or whether it was the plight of the motherless family that so stirred her soul. Whatever it was, she felt she had to act.

The next day Gwen contacted The New York Times bureau chief in Beijing who wrote the story, asking if he knew the family and how she could help. Her simple inquiry became the impetus for a personal journey into compassion, commitment and a legacy for learning that is Gwen's gift to the children of Guizhou, the poorest province in China.

Making partner
At the time, Gwen was on the fast track in Massachusetts working as a management consultant for the former Andersen Consulting Company. She had just made partner – a career coup requiring hard work, extensive travel and long hours. In fact, over the years Gwen has traveled to every continent in the world except Antarctica.

Despite her worldliness, what she learned from researching the story in The Times was eye opening. The man in the picture was a rural farmer, Chen Xian, whose daughters worked with him in the fields. Like many peasant farmers, he was too poor to send his children to school. Deeply moved by their plight and the overwhelming poverty there, Gwen continued to correspond with the journalist who wrote the story. Because she didn't speak Chinese, he agreed to serve as translator and intermediary with the village.

Gwen with some
of her children

Through her correspondence, Gwen identified a need she believed she could address. Although it cost less than $15 a year to send a child to school in Luodian County in Guizhou Province, many families couldn't afford the fees needed for pencils, books or paper. "Ultimately," Gwen says, "I decided to change this for some of the children by sending money so they could spend their days studying in classrooms, not working in fields."

The power of one
As a result of Gwen's benevolence, local teachers began searching the mountainside village for children who wanted to learn, and persuading their parents to let them attend school. By September 1996, there were 50 new eager students filling the classrooms. Currently, 90 students in six different schools benefit from Gwen's support each year. It is a testament to the reality, she says, that one person in this huge, formidable world can make a difference.

The connection she has with "her children" is the most important thing for Gwen. She has traveled to China three times, most recently in 2002, to meet the students she is helping and to build relationships with school officials, teachers and principals. "The people I have met there are so warm and welcoming and grateful and open," she says. "Parents would come up and say, '"Without your help, my daughter would not be in school.'"