Xin Ling had always been a bright student, but her home life was tumultuous and poverty-stricken.

At age three, Xin Ling’s mother abandoned their family, and two years later, her father committed suicide. The young girl lived with her beloved grandfather and uncle, who has a mental disability after suffering a brain injury when he was five years old.

During her second year of middle school, her mother, who had remarried and returned, sold the young girl. Three years later, at age 13, Golden Courage rescued Xin Ling, providing her with hope and a new life. Now 25, Xin Ling is a successful graduate of the Great Expectations program and she is happy and grateful for the support from Golden Courage. “I had nowhere else I could go,” she said of life before her rescue.

When I first came to Golden Courage, they helped me study and pass to get into the Great Expectations program for high school. Before I entered the school, I thought the program was only a way for me to save money since I had none. After I started, I had a new understanding about life and that is more important than money. I’ve met people who care about me. They became my family and support group. I feel secure and no longer fear. I just live.

“The other thing I realized is that after I entered the program, my world became bigger. I can grasp opportunities that I thought previously were only for other people. Now I have such pride that I graduated from Great Expectations. I didn’t dare to think I was a part of society before,” said Xin Ling.

Afterwards, I feel that whatever the opportunity is, it is there for me. I am very light – I am a person! I am no longer on the bottom and cannot breathe. I can’t imagine what my life would be right now. You do what you can to survive without education. I would probably have to go back to my mother’s hand and that’s never desirable. We never know what that woman will do so let’s not go there. One thing that Golden Courage has taught me is to be compassionate and grateful. So if I am grateful, I will always find things to be grateful for.

After Great Expectations, I graduated from Capital Normal University in Beijing. I now teach middle school geography in the Fung Hi district. College prepared me as a person in general. I feel that tourism, my major before teaching, helped me make my teaching a little more fun for my students. I have a boyfriend and on the weekends I go back home to visit my aunt. I also like to visit my uncle to help him with his challenges. Now I pay for his care.