A transnational couple has gone viral due to their 10 years’ dedication to rural “leftover” children’s vocational education in Dehong Dai and Jingpo autonomous prefecture in Yunnan.

Li Yang and her Dutch husband Anton Lustig, started the education program “prop roots” in 2009 in order to help the local children who were not admitted to high school have more career choices.

Through forms like photography, painting and camps, the rural participants get the basic know how of various professions in cities that they never knew of before.

Besides diversified courses, the couple also concern themselves with helping the teenagers emotionally, since they have been apart from their migrant worker parents for a long time.

“Jingpo autonomous prefecture, on the border, has a complicated social atmosphere. Children who do not stay with their parents are more vulnerable to adverse influences,” explained Li as her reason for following her husband, a language researcher who had been studying in the area for 20 years, to settle in the rural area in spite of her parents’ disapproval. Li said that the first time she went to the village in 2007, the children reminded her of her own childhood.“What rural leftover children lack most is family care.”

Up to now, 200 teenagers that have taken part in the program have started a career they like in various cities across China.