"Through the nursing training, I’ve mastered the techniques required for caring for the elderly, patients, newborns, and women who have just gone through labor, and found a job with a monthly pay of some 3,000 yuan; I'm satisfied," said 51-year-old Zhang Guizhi, a woman from Xiaoyi city, Shanxi province.

Zhang once lived in a poor rural area of Shanxi, where land is barren, and spent much of her time doing housework. Women there typically depended on the earnings of male breadwinners.

To lift them out of poverty, Lyuliang initiated a nursing and homemaking training program in 2015. The local government has established a nurse training base in Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi and selected several colleges as pilot sites for nursing training.

Also, the government has cooperated with many care service companies and welfare centers, and set up liaison offices for caregivers in cities like Beijing and Taiyuan to assist women working in these roles.

More housewives like Zhang thus now go out and earn money for their families with the nursing skills acquired during training.

So far, Lyuliang has trained some 20,000 caregivers in 11 batches with more than 9,000 employed in Beijing, Taiyuan in Shanxi province, and Baotou and Hohhot in Inner Mongolia autonomous region. The caregivers receive monthly payments of some 3,000 yuan ($449.20) on average.

On Aug 15, another 1,200 trained caregivers left Lyuliang for big cities like Beijing and Qingdao, with the hope of enjoying brighter futures.

Zhang Guizhi learns childcare skills at Lyuliang Mountain High-Level Caregiver Training Base in Fenyang county, Shanxi province, on Aug 12. [Photo/Xinhua]