Free Lunch for Children is a Chinese children's-lunch charity that has delivered 'a 3-yuan lunch, with accounts published every day.' In 2011, investigative reporter Deng Fei was shocked, while reporting in Guizhou, by the reality that rural schools had no cafeteria and children who walked long mountain paths went hungry during class on one meal a day. 'They say there is no such thing as a free lunch—so why can't we make one happen?' He teamed up with 500 reporters, the China Social Welfare Foundation and the Red Cross to start crowdfunding a 3-yuan (under 50-cent) meal on Weibo. The core of the scheme is thorough transparency: each funded school publishes its accounts daily on a Weibo account, over 2 million followers watch, and if a surprise audit finds fraud the funding stops. By September 2021 it had raised a cumulative 833 million yuan (about $130M) across 1,555 schools and supported over 380,000 children. Further, this effort spurred the national Rural Student Nutrition Improvement Program (October 2011; 16 billion yuan a year for 26 million people). It also mattered greatly in restoring trust in charity after donations fell 80% amid a Red Cross scandal.
●●○ medium
There is no confirmed −; independently verified + decide the position (B). No unreachable strike-through.= non-additive meter
Free Lunch for Children: A 3-yuan school lunch, with accounts published every day. The letter is B; certainty is medium. Unconfirmed concerns are placed under “Watching.” (As of 2026-Q3; estimate based on public information.)
Main narrative
One person’s story (N1)
+ A single story
Ten-year-old Xie Xiaoyuan wakes before dawn and walks a snow- and landslide-prone mountain path to school. His frostbitten ears tell the harshness—for many rural children, the school lunch was the best meal of the day (one meal a day, hunger during class). With Free Lunch for Children's 3-yuan meal, they can eat a warm meal of meat and tofu. The benefit appears as the collective of children like Xie, from poor families attending far-off rural schools.
Source nature: NPR / P1 Independent (NPR). Positive effects are not used to offset negatives.
Positive / negative effects
+ effects
- In April 2011, reporter Deng Fei founded it with 500 reporters, the China Social Welfare Foundation and the Red Cross. Each school publishes accounts daily on Weibo + over 2 million watch + surprise audits. By September 2021: 1,555 schools, a cumulative 833 million yuan (about $130M), over 380,000 children supported. It spurred the national Rural Student Nutrition Improvement Program (October 2011; 16 billion yuan a year for 26 million). It also helped restore trust in charity after the Red Cross scandal.P2 Major media / company / China Today / China Daily
− effects (confirmed)
- No confirmed −.
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- Complementing areas the national program does not reach; school-infrastructure support; rural children's medical insurance; expansion into Africa; developing local staff.
A second look
The plus is rural children's nutrition, health and schooling (People), with a direct scale of 380,000, verifiable transparency of daily-published accounts, and a systemic ripple that spurred the national nutrition program (26 million people). Caveats: the contribution to the national program is one that the founder himself treats cautiously ('not direct causation, but related'), so attribution is partial; to fundraise legally in China it must go through state-affiliated foundations/the Red Cross; and 'amount raised' is an input, not the benefit outcome itself.
Sources
How to read this assessment
- Reachable upper bound (ceiling): a confirmed − sets the ceiling, and independently verified + decide the position within it. + do not cancel out −.
- The weight of evidence is not symmetric: only confirmed − are counted; the volume of disputes or allegations goes under “Watching.” + are counted from independent evidence, while an organization’s own PR is treated as “reference.”
- Size is not value: scale is not used in the assessment. Matters that stay within money or competition—investors, shareholders, sanctions, trade secrets—are also excluded.
- The letter (assessment) and certainty (how reliable the information is) are separate axes.
This is a translation; the Japanese version is authoritative. The assessments here are generated automatically by AI based on published criteria. The operator does not alter individual results. Because they are AI-generated they may contain errors, and they are opinion and commentary, not statements of fact. Where evidence is insufficient, the entry is marked “On hold.” Requests for correction are accepted via the form.
Terms: Narrative Value = an assessment (A–G) of the distance between the story an organization tells and its reality / Ceiling meter = a visualization of the reachable upper bound / Watching = unconfirmed matters not counted / Protected stakeholders = people, animals, nature, and future generations. | Generated by: AI | As of: 2026-Q3 | Back to top