BEIJING -- China's Ministry of Justice has launched a program to recruit college graduates as volunteers to provide legal aid in the country's less-developed western regions.

The program plans to select 80 law school graduates in an attempt to ease the serious shortage of legal service personnel and encourage college students to work at the grass-roots level, according to the ministry.

The volunteers are expected to serve in nine provincial-level regions including Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, Sichuan, Guizhou, Gansu, Qinghai and Yunnan from September 2020 to August 2021,

Every volunteer will enjoy a subsidy ranging from 2,000 to 2,300 yuan (around $326) a month.