KUNMING, May 27 (Xinhua) -- It is a summer evening in Lahai, a remote village in Xichou County of southwest China's Yunnan Province and all is quiet and pleasant. In front of the villagers committee office building, the elderly are chatting and children are playing. The air is fresh, and the ground is clean.

But just a year ago the land was rubbish-strewn, with foul smells rising from animal feces scattered around the roads and in ditches.

"The village looked green and lush from a distance, but was indeed covered with trash as you got closer - this is how people described our home," said local resident Hou Tinglan, 61.

As the region worst-hit by rocky desertification, Xichou in Lahai has long been trapped in poverty. Having put all their energy into making money, the locals did not care about the environment. The land was filled with garbage carelessly thrown away.

As China keeps campaigning to reduce poverty, the face of Xichou began to change in recent years. One innovative method is known as the "penny project."

By paying just 0.05 yuan each day, which is 18 yuan (2.6 U.S. dollars) a year, residents in Xichou set up a collective account to pay to clean up the area. Villagers living below the poverty line have the priority to apply for cleaning jobs.

In the meantime, the local government also allocated a monthly subsidy of 200 to 400 yuan as well as trash bins, and garbage trucks to each village, based on the population of the villages.

Long Junguang, 51, is one of the cleaners. "I had no income but I'm too old to work outside the village, becoming a sanitation worker in the village has significantly lowered my financial burden," he said.

"The garbage used to be everywhere and stinky, and we were often criticized as uneducated," said Long Fanguang, who runs a store in the village. "Now the environment is getting better and the impoverished have a way out, so we all think the money we hand in as totally worth it."

According to Jiang Jun, Xichou's party secretary, a total of 879 villages have joined the penny project and more than 1,000 jobs have been created. "We will continue expanding the project to improve local environment and create more jobs for those living in poverty."