As the National Poverty Relief Day and the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty approached, ICBC officially released its plan to recruit impoverished college students on October 17, 2016. According to the plan, ICBC will start recruiting the impoverished college students from this year and offer jobs to 1,000 impoverished college students within five years. It will combine job support with targeted poverty alleviation measures to help underprivileged families out of poverty and promote economic and social development in poverty-stricken areas. According to distribution of China's poverty-stricken counties, and based on branches' demands for hiring, ICBC started to recruit the impoverished college students across 21 provinces, cities and districts this year. It would recruit about 280 graduates. Earlier, the Bank has already recruited more than 110 impoverished college students in the spring recruitment this year.

Deputy Secretary of ICBC Party Committee and President-elect of ICBC Gu Shu said that the special recruitment of impoverished college students is a new measure by the Bank to support targeted poverty alleviation and fulfill social responsibilities. Helping 1,000 impoverished college students resolve the employment problem is to implement the targeted poverty alleviation for 1,000 families. To ensure the objective of targeted poverty alleviation, ICBC has dedicated a series of support measures for impoverished college students, including employment standards, recruitment process and targeted training plan.

The first is to precisely target the impoverished college students and appropriately ease employment standards. College graduates in 2017 registered in the list of the underprivileged families filed in the local poverty relief office, or in the impoverished student database of institutions of higher learning, or obtaining national scholarship or subsidies can sign up for the special recruitment. In addition, the minimum education background for impoverished college students is the full-time students upgrading from junior college to university. More impoverished college students are encouraged to join the recruitment.
 
The second is to formulate targeted training plan and provide the stage for the growth of impoverished college students. Excellent poor college students are not only active in thinking with good knowledge and high quality, but also have the ambition to change poverty of the hometown. They represent younger generations with vigor and innovation. ICBC will see them as important talents in county-level institutions by strengthening education and training, and offering post-entry, pre-post learning and persistent vocational training to take advantage of their familiarity with hometown environment and county economic status, and encourage them to build their hometowns with their learning and support local economic development.

The third is to actively meet financial service demands of the poverty-stricken areas and offer strong talent support. Given the weakness in financial talents and financial service capability in some county institutions, especially poor and remote areas, ICBC will meet their talent demands and attract more talents to serve poverty-stricken areas with a view to stimulate the power of finance and innovation in poverty alleviation.

As China’s largest commercial bank, ICBC has long valued poverty relief as an integral part of social responsibility. From 1995, it initiated targeted poverty alleviation according to the government's arrangements for the poverty relief work. In the past 20 years, it has carried out projects including the “Hope Project – Plan of Helping Impoverished Primary and Secondary School Students”, "Setting Sail Project --- Action of Assisting Impoverished College Students”, “Candlelight Plan --- Activity of Selecting and Training Excellent Rural Teachers”, “Infant & Mom Safety 120 Action”, “Ecological Breeding and Ecological Homestead Plan”, and “Stream Bridge Project”, brazing a new path of poverty relief and development with combination of five measures including educational poverty alleviation, health poverty alleviation, industrial poverty alleviation, disaster relief poverty alleviation and green poverty alleviation. It sent 88 officials for poverty alleviation to four poverty alleviation sites in Sichuan Province and donated funds and goods worth RMB 140 million, and issued RMB 8 billion loans to support a series of local poverty relief and development projects. It worked with local party committees, governments and residents to change poverty, which benefited hundreds of villages and more than 100,000 poor people in Qinling-Daba Mountains in Sichuan Province. Last November, the CPC Central Committee and State Council released the Decision on Winning Battle of Fighting Poverty and convened the central poverty relief and development work conference. ICBC responded to the CPC Central Committee’s target of “lifting all poverty-stricken counties in China out of poverty and impoverished people out of poverty by 2020”, implemented the arrangements for “precise poverty alleviation and extermination”, and carried out relevant financial poverty alleviation policies and measures. While doing a good job on fixed-point poverty alleviation and targeted poverty alleviation by finance, the Bank has also further opened up thinking, effectively mobilized the whole bank’s resources, increased efforts in precisely educational poverty alleviation and employment poverty alleviation to help the impoverished people realize self-accumulation and enhance their self-development ability.

Over the years, ICBC has taken the education as the basis for poverty relief and development, and implemented a series of assistance and aid projects. In addition to building school hardware, training and awarding excellent rural teachers, it has also focused on growth of the impoverished students and carried out targeted assistance activities in different stages from primary school, middle school to university. At present, the number of the excellently impoverished college students subsidized by the Bank exceeds 2,400. With the increase of the college graduates year by year, the job competition has been rising. Some impoverished college students have faced big pressure on employment. This year, ICBC has further extended the educational poverty alleviation chain and focused on employment of the impoverished college students included in the poverty files, and explored ways to cut off inter-generation transition of poverty chain through education.

For example, a girl from the underprivileged family from Baiyang Town, Wanyuan City, Sichuan Province obtained the Bank’s subsidies via the "Setting Sail Project” in 2012 to enter an university. After graduation this year, she entered ICBC Sichuan Wanyuan Branch through the targeted recruitment for impoverished college students. She has performed excellently and helped the family improve the living standards. With the progress of the targeted recruitment for impoverished college students, more and more impoverished college students, will help their families out of poverty in the future.