Our early life experiences tend to shape who we are and what we do in our adulthood.

For Tien Ching, founder of the charity organization Educating Girls in Rural China, her experience during the “cultural revolution” (1966-76) in her teenage years changed her life, and consequently, the destiny of hundreds of girls in Gansu, Guizhou and Qinghai provinces that have benefitted from the education project she created.

Tien Ching, who now lives in Canada, was only 17 years old when her life took a dramatic turn after being sent to work in a factory in rural Gansu.

She went from studying in one of Beijing’s most prestigious schools to completely giving up on her education.

When she returned to the capital city eight years later in the early 80s she found it hard to enroll in university and decided to emigrate to Canada to chase a better future.

She started a family there and did not look back to that period of her life.

But in 2004, during a UNICEF fundraiser event for African girls at her daughter’s school, she was inspired by the concept that “educated women will have educated children”.

That was her “light bulb moment” to set up Educating Girls in Rural China.