[16 May]CAMPUS GOINGS-ON : Volunteer work prepares SISU students to make a difference

Resource:http://en.shisu.edu.cn/resources/news/voluntary-work-prepares-sisu-students-to-make-a-difference

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s the Mother’s Day fell on May 10, special flowers were prepared by students from Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) in Sheshan Mountain, a tourist attraction of Shanghai's Songjiang District. But the flowers were not for mothers, but for kids--they were sold to raise money in support of education in rural areas in China.

Raindrops Voluntary Association (RVA) launched the activity. Established in 2008, it is one of the main charitable societies in SISU, which renders team voluntary recruitment to support education every summer.

“Youngsters shoulder the responsibility to help the society,” said Xie Ruxue, the head of the RVA.

According to Xie, the RVA endeavors to reinterpret the meaning of volunteers. It has set up four voluntary teams of 66 members in total: Hubei Team, Yunnan Team, Guizhou Team and Anhui Team. They are sent each year to remote areas in Guizhou Province and Yunnan Province, southwest of China, Hubei Province, middle of China, and Anhui Province, east of China.

On the one hand, the volunteers are required to join in a team that caters to their personal interests most. On the other hand, these teams also need to find best partners who fit the concept of public welfare most through several layers of interviews in order to improve the teaching quality of college students.

Wu Yipeng, a student from SISU’s School of Education, has anticipated the summer programs for twice. She wrote detailed teaching plans in order to ensure the quality of teaching.

“I hope I can do better to help them, not as a volunteer or outsider,” said Wu.

“Why do you want to do this? Some claims to bring knowledge to rural children, while some wants to broaden their horizons and, of course, some people, not to say, as we have already known, they are aiming at getting a poor practice certificate,” said Wu Xiwen, one of the former leaders of RVA, from School of French and Francophone Studies in SISU.

“But we are not. The reasons why we go to the villages are not just to design a new life track for those children, neither to taught them out of the mountains. We're going to open a window for them and to tell them what the outside world is like,” she said.

The financial support of these welfare activities are from two main sources. One is to participate in various charity contests for winning a prize. In April, the RVA took part in Lingqing Jihua, a charity competition offering rewards.

Another way is to cooperate with sponsorship, but due to the limited publicity and commercial characters of the enterprises, the main part of the sponsorship from them are materials. The RVA also organized activities to raise money and staffs.

According to Xie, RVA has cooperated the book-givings for two years with Shanghai Municipal Library in Huangpu District, which provided at least 1,000 free books.

In SISU, apart from the RVA, there are at least four other teams aiming to offer special education: Eternal Fire, Clovers, Way to North and Sea Dream. But Xie Believes that RVA is the best.

“Every year we trained new members in a special pattern,” said Xie.

She still remembered that in 2015, Wang Wen, a senior staff in Lingshan Charity,a well-known charitable Organization located in Jiangsu Province, east of China, came over to encourage the team to be better.

“I feel I am growing up with the RVA”, said Xie.

“In fact, there are 10,000 possibilities of life. We never have dreamed to change a person’s life just within two weeks, but we believe the influence and those memories we could give them,” she said.