The China Family Planning Association raised 620 million yuan (about US$86 million) in 2007 to provide family planning and reproductive health care services, an association official said on Tuesday.

"We will set up family planning centers in urban communities, health care centers for elderly people and 'sunshine stations' to popularize family planning knowledge among people at child-bearing age," said Pan Guiyu, vice executive chairwoman of the association.

The non-governmental organization (NGO) has been offering emergency aid, volunteer service and counseling to the public since it was founded in 1980. It is the largest NGO in China and a member of the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

Pan said all the funding would be spent in sponsoring projects nationwide to step up education and services on family planning and reproductive health. About 13 million yuan, for example, was injected last year to the Happiness Project. It helps poor mothers in underdeveloped areas in the northwestern provinces of Shaanxi and Qinghai and autonomous regions of Xinjiang and Ningxia.

Another 80 million yuan was invested in western Gansu Province to provide small loans and technological training for 127,700 families that have followed the family planning policy.

In the central Jiangxi Province, 460,000 such families received life insurance from the government. The provincial government also earmarked more than ten million yuan to help the association expand pension coverage for rural families with two daughters and no sons.

By the end of 2007, the association had helped to promote family planning across the country by expanding the birth control education to 70 percent of rural and 85 percent of urban areas.

Its efforts were in line with the tough acts by the government to curb violation of family planning laws. For such violations, 500 Party members in the central Hubei Province and 104 in the southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region were ousted last year.

(Xinhua News Agency January 17, 2008)