School takes on rural mission

Beijing-based New Oriental works with teachers, kids in remote areas to improve educational access

A middle-aged man, sitting up straight in a back corner of a classroom, moved his pen quickly as if trying to write down every single word the teacher said about English teaching for primary school students.

The 56-year-old, an English teacher at a rural school, was attending a three-day training program provided by New Oriental Education and Technology Group in Nanchang, capital of East China's Jiangxi province on Aug 22-24.

The teacher, surnamed Cheng, said the class was different from traditional English teaching content, for example covering how to inspire students' enthusiasm for learning and how to strengthen their understanding of new knowledge. He said the training benefited him significantly.

Beijing-based New Oriental, China's leading private educational service provider, initiated this public welfare program, called Candlelight Action, in 2008. It provides free, short-term training for teachers in primary and middle schools in underdeveloped areas to help raise their teaching standards. The program's trainers are all elite teachers at New Oriental.

This year, the event started on Aug 15, with more than 50 trainers spending about two weeks teaching classes to over 4,000 rural school teachers in seven provinces, including Heilongjiang, Guizhou, Anhui and Sichuan.

"New Oriental places a high value on improving rural education, in which teachers are a top priority," said Michael Minhong Yu, the founder of the education colossus. "Developing a good teacher provides a foundation for nurturing a class of good students, which then will help to boost the education development of the entire area."

In the past decade, Candlelight Action has trained over 30,000 teachers, benefiting millions of rural school students. The program is just a small part of New Oriental's efforts to fulfill its corporate social responsibility.

The company, established in 1993, has contributed about 300 million yuan ($43.45 million) establishing Hope Primary Schools, setting up funds and supporting disaster-hit areas, and has also provided experienced professionals for public lectures, volunteer teaching and free courses and training.

It is because New Oriental pays continuous attention to society's needs that it has earned its current social recognition and has witnessed better development, Yu said.

The company's public welfare activities mainly focus on equal access to education and family education.

Activities under the equal access to education branch include offering hardworking college students a scholarship, constructing Hope Primary Schools and providing volunteer teachers in Northwest Beijing's Yanqing district.

"Promoting more balanced education in China and striving for better development for children in rural and mountainous areas are not only social responsibilities for New Oriental, but also missions for individuals to bear," Yu said, adding that effective approaches should be combined to help the poor via education.

In 2007, New Oriental invested 50 million yuan to set up a fund, together with the Communist Youth League of China Central Committee and the All-China Students' Federation. It supports Chinese college students that are hardworking, courageous persevering and persistent. Last year, the company injected another 50 million yuan into the fund.

As for Hope Primary Schools, New Oriental built its first in 2002 in Tongjiazhuang town in Shaanxi province, with an investment of 200,000 yuan. To date, it has constructed seven Hope Primary Schools in the Tibet autonomous region and provinces of Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan, with total investment exceeding 20 million yuan.

A "dual-teacher model class" project is another important attempt to promote balanced educational resources throughout China, focusing on high-quality teachers in particular.

The "dual-teacher model class" means that New Oriental teachers from metropolises give live lessons on the internet and local teachers serve as the assistant and answer questions after class.

This model allows New Oriental to share its high-quality teaching resources with thousands of students in remote and underdeveloped areas at a small cost, the company said.

The company launched the project in 2016 and developed a long-term operational model in 2017 in several national poverty-stricken regions, such as Guangzong country in Hebei province and the counties of Yanbian, Muli and Luding in Sichuan.

In addition to these activities, New Oriental has also made many donations to disaster-hit areas to aid education-related reconstruction.

haonan@chinadaily.com.cn

Major social responsibility activities

• 2002 New Oriental Education and Technology Group offers 200,000 yuan ($28,900) to build its first Hope Primary School in Tongjiazhuang town in Shaanxi province.

• 2003 The company donates online courses worth 2 million yuan to medical workers in Haidian district, Beijing, who have made significant contributions to combating SARS.

• 2004 The company donates 1 million yuan to Bijie in Guizhou province to set up the New Oriental Scholarship in a bid to help local poor students that cannot afford university tuition. It also organizes a poverty alleviation project in Bijie, and offers free training to local middle and primary school teachers during summer vacations.

• 2006 The company joins a poverty alleviation project to provide 1,500 poor students nationwide with English training worth more than 1.5 million yuan within a year.

• 2007 The company offers 1.4 million yuan, and together with the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, aids more than 6,000 impoverished college students to go home to celebrate Spring Festival. In July that year, it donates 400,000 yuan to rebuild Zhang Lan Primary School in Xichong, Sichuan province.

• 2008 Michael Minhong Yu, founder and president of New Oriental, leads volunteers to send goods and supplies to earthquake-stricken areas in Wenchuan, Sichuan in May. The company also donates nearly 15 million yuan to those areas. In September that year, it invested 3 million yuan to build a Hope Primary School in an earthquake-stricken area in Gannan Tibetan autonomous prefecture, Gansu province.

• 2009 The company donates 2 million yuan to the Beijing Foundation for Youth Entrepreneurship and Employment to support young people to start up their businesses.

• 2010 Yu donates 1 million yuan to Peking University in November 2010 and the same amount in September 2012 as a stipend for poor students.

• 2013 The company donates 2 million yuan to earthquake-stricken areas in Yaan, Sichuan for schools to resume classes.

• 2014 The company donates 3.2 million yuan to the Ai You Foundation for helping sick children.

• 2015 The company sets up its public welfare foundation for aiding educational development in impoverished areas and promoting the sharing of educational resources.

• 2016 The company starts a plan to provide high-quality educational resources through internet technologies to 100 middle schools in 100 impoverished counties.

• 2017 The company donates 50 million yuan to its fund for Chinese university students who are "hardworking, persevering and persistent".

• 2018 The company donates 50 million yuan to Peking University to set up an educational fund, mainly for strengthening teaching, scientific research and training the university's school of foreign languages; supporting the establishment of high-level teacher teams; and inspiring students to participate in overseas communications and study activities.

(China Daily 11/13/2018 page12)