EIGHTY volunteers, mainly new college graduates selected from 10 provinces, left Shenzhen yesterday to teach one semester in 31 rural schools in Gansu, Jiangxi and Guangxi.
More than half of them were chosen from two local universities, Shenzhen University and Shenzhen Polytechnic.
At a farewell ceremony yesterday, China Aviation Technology Import & Export Corp. Group (CATIC) Shenzhen donated 1 million yuan (US$146,400) to sponsor the educational aid program. The program was initiated by Xu Lingfeng, a local entrepreneur who has donated most of his savings to help rural students.
It was the seventh time that Shenzhen had sent volunteers under the program.
This year’s program was jointly organized by the Shenzhen Economic Daily, Shenzhen Project Care Office and Shenzhen Charity Federation.
“I first learned about the program from my school’s Web site,” said Chen Jianpei, a student at Shenzhen Polytechnic who made a speech on behalf of the volunteers.
“I chose to take part in the program because students in rural areas are in dire need of teachers,” he said. “Teachers in rural areas are working with a heavy load teaching different subjects. I hope I can be of some help to them.”
“I want to enrich my life experience to see life in western China and also help students there change their lives with my knowledge,” Ding Ling, 33, an English teacher from Yongcheng Vocational College, Henan Province. Ding had just arrived in Shenzhen for the program after the funeral of her father-in-law.
Since the program was launched in 2006, 327 volunteers had worked in 120 village schools of nine provinces and autonomous regions including Guizhou, Shaanxi, Gansu and Tibet. Around 30,000 village students had benefited from the program.
Gao Changxin, Han Ximin