Learning experience

Striving for quality education for children in remote, impoverished areas has been central to the poverty alleviation campaign in China, and a major part of the effort is made by student volunteers from universities in the country.

At Fudan University in Shanghai, 247 graduate students have volunteered to impart knowledge to children in Xihaigu region, Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region, for the past 22 years.

The region with a population of 2.2 million was declared by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations as one of the world's most uninhabitable places in 1972, due to its dry climate and harsh natural environment. All six counties in the region were lifted from absolute poverty in November.

"We expected to make changes for the future lives of kids in the poverty-stricken area by using our knowledge in various fields," Pan Xichun, who was among the first batch of Fudan students dispatched to Xiji county back in 1999, tells Guangming Daily.

Volunteers adapt their teaching strategies to student needs and help them develop efficient study habits.

"Local children had barely learned English, so we started with basic knowledge like the alphabet and pronunciation," recalls Li Lianshuo, a Fudan volunteer who taught English to first grade students at Wangmin Middle School in Xiji in 2017.

They instructed students to memorize vocabulary, read articles and solve study problems patiently.

The effort paid off when local children gradually came to like the foreign language and became confident enough to speak it. According to the university, the average grade of English at the high school entrance examination of senior students at the school was higher than the county's average last year.

Home visits are critical as well, when volunteers can communicate with students' parents, and more importantly, help parents understand the significance of children's education and increasing parents' involvement in it, explains Yang Chenhaotong, who was the leader of the volunteer team in 2019 and a student from the school of economics at Fudan.

According to Yang, parents are firmly supportive of compulsory education now, compared with years ago when many didn't seem to care much about their children's education.

Student unions, a football club, and other groups have been established by volunteers to enrich students' life. The university has also donated more than 10 million yuan ($1.55 million) for the construction of basic educational facilities and provision of teaching materials over the past 22 years.

"I will study hard for an admission to university and become excellent just like my volunteer teachers from Shanghai," says Li Sumei, a student from Sanhe Middle School in Xiji.

This sentiment was echoed by Yang Yan, a postgraduate in pharmacy at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, who grew up in the once poverty-stricken Eryuan county, in Dali, Yunnan province, where 65 postgraduates from the same university have assisted in teaching children there since 2012.

Thanks to the care from the volunteers in her life and study, Yang was admitted to the university when she became first ranked in Eryuan during the college entrance examination six years ago.

Motivated by gratitude, Yang has been an enthusiast of volunteer activities, like teaching children of migrant workers in the city, to give back to the community.

She volunteered to teach biology in Luzhai county, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, in 2019, sharing the latest scientific knowledge with children in class and donating daily supplies like medicated soaps and herbal foot soak ingredients. She says she hoped to motivate children that came from a similar background as her.

The care and love from volunteers in Shanghai for children in less-developed areas continued even when the COVID-19 pandemic caused widespread disruption to education across the country last year.

A volunteer team from East China Normal University in Shanghai, for example, remotely assisted in COVID-19 prevention and control at Wuding No 1 Middle School in Wuding county, Chuxiong Yi autonomous prefecture, Yunnan province, where 260 graduates from the university have been deployed to improve local education since 1999.

They also managed to explore more online teaching strategies for livestreamed classes, such as gameplay.

Wu Wenxuan from ECNU, who volunteered to teach chemistry at the school, recalls that her voice once became hoarse during an online class. When the class was over, she was moved by sweet comments from students through the livestreaming platform reminding her to drink more water and to take a break.

"I used to wonder how I would be capable of influencing local children by volunteering. But the doubts vanished when I returned to the county I volunteered in years later and met the students I taught," says Zhou Limin, one of the first batch of volunteers from ECNU in 1999 and a professor at the school of geographical sciences at the university.

"They have since become teachers themselves and still remember me. It was then I realized that volunteering is absolutely worth it," he adds.