Project Hope may be the best-know charity among Chinese people and multinationals in the nation: over the past 18 years more than 13,000 schools were built with donations and 3.04 million children from poor families were helped to finish their education.

But a change in the way of supporting education is quietly underway. As the overwhelming majority of children now are able to finish their nine years of compulsory education with financial aid from the government, the focus of supporting education is turning to helping the healthy growth of young students and encouraging the involvement of volunteers.

Naofumi Hara, senior vice-president of Sony Corp, believes it is natural that with a country's growth, the focus for educational programs should change and companies interested in contributing to the development of society should also change accordingly.

The Japanese electronics giant, with a history of almost 50 years of supporting education at home, is also changing its strategies to fit the needs of Chinese students and educational programs.

"We have been focusing on social responsibility projects in education in the past decades and this has never changed, but we must combine the needs of society and our internal resources for the best results of such projects," says Hara, the chief executive in charge of corporate social responsibility at Sony.

In June, China Youth Development Foundation (CYDF), administrator of Project Hope, formulated a six-year (2007-12) strategic plan, which says aiding poor children and their families in the rural area is still the No 1 priority, but providing infrastructure other than school rooms and increasing the role of volunteers should become two other pillars of the plan.

The needs of schools and students in poorer regions have shifted from the survival stage to development and they now ask for more help with libraries and sports facilities, the foundation says.

Non-governmental organizations like CYDF have started initiatives that ask companies or individuals to donate books, pens and pencils, basketballs and badminton racquets to schools .

Hara says in an interview in Beijing that Sony established its first educational foundation in 1959 when Japan was still poor to give financial aid to high school and university students in science education, which helped raise scientific knowledge in the country.

Education is still the top priority of Sony's social responsibility projects, but the focus has turned to offering more volunteers and giving students first-hand experience in technology and environmental protection at its factories and laboratories.

While many multinationals have given their support to Project Hope to build schools, Sony, sensing the change in the country, has decided to give furnishing items and resources to underdeveloped rural regions.

Since 2003, the electronics giant has worked with CYDF to donate desks and chairs, as well as blackboards.

Its donations amounted to 3.3 million yuan, enough to build 11 Project Hope schools, but 92 rural schools in 24 provincial regions on the mainland instead received 23,000 sets of desks and chairs and 900 blackboards.

As China is emerging on the global stage, how to encourage students to behave like global citizens with an understanding of other nations is another aspect in which multinationals think they can be of help.

Sony started a Sony student project abroad program in China last year, the second country in which it has established the initiative.

From 1990 to 1997, about the time when Japan and its companies were building a profile as an emerging global power, the program brought 500 United States high school students to Japan to increase their understanding of that nation.

In 2006, 20 high school students in Beijing and Shanghai went to Japan to see how the Japanese are saving energy and recycling waste.

This year, Sony increased the number of participating students to 30 from three cities - Beijing, Hangzhou and Chengdu - and the theme is how to be a civilized citizen in today's world.

"Beijing is hosting the Olympic Games next year and Hangzhou and Chengdu are hosting the FIFA Women World Cup, so how the Chinese behave like civilized hosts is important to the image of China and its people," says Li Xi, spokeswoman of Sony China.

"We hope through the experience of these young students, they can help their cities and people around them understand how to be a civilized hosts."

The students visited recycling facilities at Sony and in Japanese cities, built green sports community models with Japanese youth and spent two days with their host families, to get a better understanding of Japanese society.