Background on Yunnan

There is currently 9 years of free compulsory education in China until the age of 14. In 2009, the education chief of Yunnan announced plans to extend this period to 13 years by 2020. There are already schools in Yunnan which offer this pilot program (there are also schools in some other provinces such as Guangdong and Shandong). At present, 6 million students are enrolled in Yunnan’s 22, 000 primary and middle schools (Yunnan has a population of 46 million).

Yunnan is very multi-ethnic, with 51 ethnicities in its population. This presents as a barrier to the education system, particularly elementary education. Children are taught in Mandarin Chinese and language (and cultural) differences are quick to emerge. Enrolment for the early primary years are high amongst ethnic communities are initially high, but a high number dropout due to poor learning of Chinese (the medium of education). Another factor contributing to the dropout numbers would be Yunnan’s poverty (the average annual income for farmers is 2000 RMB/year); children are often viewed as more ‘useful’ when helping out with the family than at school.

However, in the past decade, international groups have introduced changes of a small to moderate magnitude to primary education in Yunnan. One such group is the East Asia Group (EAG) which implemented its ‘Zero Barrier Multilingual Education’ concept amongst select schools.

The concept aims to increase the educational achievement attained by ethnic minorities. Children from ethnic minorities are taught for two years in their mother tongue in pre-school before transitioning to being instructed in Chinese in Grade 1 (reading and writing; there is some speaking at pre-school level). Classes in their mother tongue are also continued; the teaching of the minority groups’ traditions and culture are also fostered. Children must be fluent in their mother tongue before being to proceed to instruction in Mandarin Chinese. These model education centres have been met with success so far, although it must be noted there is significant investment required; the style of teaching, teaching materials, educational environment, etc. are different to the typical Chinese classroom.

Larger scaled improvements to education have been in place at the adult education level for several decades. There have been numerous part-time schools established offering intensive courses, encouraging adults and those who live in more remote areas to receive a basic level of education. These enable those who work (~52% of the population) gain literacy without leaving their jobs. Despite these efforts, the illiteracy rate in Yunnan is still between an estimated 10-15%.

Angel’s teaching experience in China

Target
I visited a primary school in Luoding Shi which is in Guangdong for 1 week in 2010, teaching a class of 30 Grade 6 students English. My team mates and I designed a series of teaching plan which includes games, music and competitions. We started off every English lesson with a new simple English song. I would ask all of them to stand up and form a circle with hands holding together to create a warm and friendly atmosphere. Sometimes we would also add actions to the songs to further strengthen their memory.

Impressive Moments
Many of the students turned out to be pretty good at English. When designing the teaching plan, our team planned to give them a revision on the first lesson and for the following lessons we would teach them simple English vocabularies. However we found out at the revision class that most of them were good enough to speak simple English words. Therefore we quickly made changes in the teaching plan to fit the scenario at that time. The plan turned out to be very successful as all the students enjoyed having English lessons with us. Most importantly, they really learnt some useful English from all these activities.

Benefits of Students
I think the students understood that learning can be fun at the end of our program. Under the rural area education system, students have no choice but to sit in the classroom passively. Due to their living environment, most of them are not able to get access to the internet to listen to English songs and cannot afford buying CDs. Hence it is a whole new experience for them to have a chance to study English in this playful way so I think the program had definitely raised their interest in English. This trip also stimulated them to think of things that can make learning more interesting regardless of their living condition. For example, doing role play with classmates in English is one of the fun ways to enjoy themselves after class without spending money.

Benefits of Myself
I have learnt to appreciate everyone’s talent after seeing all the students are so gifted. Despite of their poor living condition, I can still see many of them strike hard and hope one day they could get out of the rural areas and follow their dreams. I believe that everyone deserves to have equal rights, that is why I keep encouraging them not to give up easily and should always keep up this spirit. I also try to give them positive energy by praising their good English. It motivates me to participate in more volunteer teaching every time I saw their cheerful faces as I feel like I have influenced them to think positive and optimistically.

Methods And Approaches
Before playing games or starting an activity in each lesson, our team would usually gave a briefing to the students to let them know the instructions. Our strategy is wish to create a comfortable atmosphere hence we would ask the students to sit in pairs to make them feel they are not having a formal lesson. However, this might lead to a problem that they kept chit-chatting and ignored the class. We then came up with an idea of setting up a scoring system. Marks will be deducted for those who are not paying attention while students who are participating well in class will be rewarded.
The other approach that I used to make them feel relax is to invite them to write on the whiteboard or blackboard. They usually got very excited about that because only teachers are allowed to write on the board during normal school days.
Drawing is another essential method to get the children enjoy the lesson. I would then suggest colour pencils as a perfect prize for those who win a class competition.

Children of Shambala

In August 2005 Jan Terje Voilaas returned to Norway after bicycling around the world – 43.000 kilometers through 35 countries. He went straight back to work as a financial director, but found it difficult to settle back into normal Norwegian life. He resigned, wrote a book and headed out into the world again, this time to end up in northern Yunnan Province. Shortly after he founded Children of Shambala (CoS), a small non-political, non-religious NGO that is now registered as an independent foundation.

Work done to day

Since 2006, CoS has planned, financed and implemented around 115 small scale development projects in remote parts of China’s western regions, most of them in Qinghai Province.

Using approximate figures, achieved so far:

• 5,000 people and approximately 25,000 livestock have been supplied with clean water

• 18,000 present and 18,000 future primary school students have been supplied with reading books, study materials and sports equipment

• 4,000 primary school students have received warm winter clothes and shoes

• 4,000 boarding school students have received 3-in-one hygienic food boxes and other hygiene equipment

• 3,500 first grade students have been equipped with school starter packages

• 1,000 primary school students have received important additional teaching in English and Chinese

• 70 young minority teachers have been helped to find their first paid job experience

• 30 students have been helped financially through high school and university

• Several hundred poor families have been supplied with solar cookers, solar power generating sets, threshing machines and milk churns

In addition, they have:

• Established a substantial contact network of individuals, institutions and government bodies particularly in China but also in Norway. Around 400 Norwegian families are now supporting CoS in different ways.

• Gained substantial relevant experience through living and working for more than five years in China’s western regions

CoS Fellowship Program

The Shambala Fellowship Program is for people interested in working in Asia on behalf of COS and OWW. It’s an innovative program looking to supplant the program fees typical of these kinds of programs. Instead, COS seeks applicants who demonstrate an enthusiasm for fundraising on behalf of the children in the OWW program. All Fellows accepted into the program will have all expenses paid by COS and receive a monthly stipend.
The Shambala Fellowship Program has the following two goals:

1) Recruit and train outstanding candidates as Shambala Fellows to work with humanitarian organizations in a developing country in Asia.

2) Help as many orphans out of poverty as possible. We work with local communities to help children, who have lost one or both of their parents, and their foster families out of poverty through education.

Orphanage Without Walls (OWW)

OWW is a longterm project targeting, supporting and helping the poorest and most vulnerable orphans to grow up in a stable family situation in their local community while pursuing their highest possible level of education and/or vocational training. The ultimate goal for each individual orphan is for her/him to get her/his first paid job.

OWW combines local foster homes with direct financial and human support involving the orphan, the foster family, schools and the local NGO affiliate.

OWW is a cost effective and target-oriented project helping orphans and foster families out of poverty through education. OWW has so far proven to be surprisingly efficient. OWW represents an immense contact network and a strong platform for a variety of supplementary projects producing direct results while also strengthening OWW.

By late 2011 OWW involved almost 600 orphans and 2500 foster family members.

Form more information, visit http://childrenofshambala.org/home/

Siyuan Commonweal Organization

Seven years ago, a group of student volunteers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University stepped into Qing Yang, a penurious but promising land in Gansu Province, bringing with them a dream that waited to be bred. “Flying the hope, we help with the grassroots education. Never forgetting where all the sweetness came from, we focus on the rural development.” From their simple but sincere words, we can easily feel the passion of the students to help develop the rural area and the education.

It is the passion that enables the small group with only more than ten students develop into an organization named Siyuan Commonweal Organization that have built 7 local libraries in 5 counties of 4 provinces, with 500 volunteer teachers and 2000 students so far.

This is their story:

Summer Vacation Education Support Programme

We gathered together for the same dream of supporting education. We once again headed together towards a new direction, to the rural parts. Every minute is filled with happy memories and touching moments during our teaching time together in Gansu Yigang, Miaoqu, Sancha, Maqu; Henan Xiuwu; Zhejiang Lishui; Chongqing Shiyan. It is really a wonderful thing that we spend time together in those hot summers.

The Education Support Team has had a history of seven years since 2004 when it set up. The growing of the team has full filled the past seven-year-history. Members of the team have left us too many treasures from their experiences every year.

Teaching English is always our main action. We are continuing exploring new zones and trying our best to use various teaching methods. The most important thing is to open children’s eyes and develop their thinking methods. As well as we put our heart in updating the teaching methods so that rural children can have more future pathways under our education support. There are about 800 students in a total of 16 classes who participate in our team and some of them even come the whole way along from Ningxia and Inner Mongolia. We have given a total of 1764 hours of teaching period. In addition, the English teaching period is up to 977 hours, the main courses teaching period is up to 425 hours and the activity period is up to 296 hours. There is a total of 88 hours of discussion competitions, reading competitions, drama competitions and so on. Each student has received 27.5 hours of teaching period in average.

Our motivation is children’s dreams of their wonderful future and their eager of knowledge. The Education Support Programme is going on and on with our promise which is we would not give up in any chances to improve the rural education condition. These new starting points are all setting under our real thoughts of helping children in the rural parts.

Library Programme

It is a really big problem for most of the rural children that they are lack of books. They do not have many chances to read books. Only several extra-curricular books or magazines can be passed around among students an entire semester. However, there are books about different areas and even some of the very old ones can be through away or sales as waste paper for us. Have you ever considered that some of them might help the rural children to get to know the world outside and open their eyes or even make them gain the ability to change their lives?

The main point of our Siyuan Books Programme is books. Books will be shipped to the places which is lack of books with informs of the service location. We hope that Siyuan libraries will be built with collaboration in the places which is really lack of books under our efforts and various reading activities will be held within the libraries. This is done for children and set up a relationship for them to education. Meanwhile, it is also done for developing children’s reading habits.

Sponsored by British BP Company and Eaton Company, we have built Siyuan libraries for schools in Sancha, Miaoqu, Xiuwu, Baihelin since 2007. 3 communities, 19 schools, 2 libraries, 2 publishing companies and many kind individuals have donated thousands of books to Siyuan libraries these few years. We conduct surveys at these libraries during the teaching period in each summer holiday to get to know how well do they run. At the same time, we organise many fun activities which are based on reading. Such as extracting good words and sentences, sharing a good book, and reciting competition. We aim to create a curious atmosphere among students.

Images from http://siyuan.sjtu.edu.cn

China Tomorrow Education Foundation

China Tomorrow Education Foundation (CTEF) is operated by a group of dedicated volunteers. They are mostly full time employees that already facing a tough job balancing a busy life and highly pressured work. Still, they come together to work towards a greater goal to help the needed and give back to the society. CTEF has a long tradition to closely monitor the school renovation project and visit the schools that have been built in various developing stages.

Although CTEF is a Seattle based non-profit organization and most of volunteers are based in the US, a significant part of our operation is in China, and they are counting on the hard working Chinese local volunteers and many other NGO partners. From “5.12 pen-pal project”, to the 1+1 Student Sponsorship program and recently the Teacher Award program, many of their projects are labor intensive. Each stage in these projects requires volunteers to send out initial survey forms, contact every individual involved to explain and follow up.

An old school building – one of CTEF’s projects

School building rebuilt by volunteers

CTEF’s volunteers go beyond the Chinese community. Mr. Jannick B. Pedersen is a Danish. He is now an advisor to CTEF on their strategic direction. Jannick flew from Denmark to Seattle visited CTEF volunteers in September 2010, helped them to formulate the third important element of the 1+1 program – help students grow wisdom through donors and volunteers interaction with students.

From 2004-2009, CTEF has sponsored 17 schools in Gansu, China with total donation of 186M RMB ($30M). And amazingly, local communities are greatly influenced by CTEF activities that they are supporting the education effort as well.

For example, CTEF donated limited funds to XiLiuZhuang Elementary School. At the same time, couple of local families donated more than 10k RMB ($1.6k) as well as time and labor to build a new roof for the school.

An old school in Guping, Guizhou

The school rebuilt by CTEF

JiuZhi Elementary is a boarding school with more than 200 residents. While CTEF was building the school facilities, local communities donated more than 20k RMB ($3.3k) for 5 dorms. When the builder company knew that this was for education investment, it also reduced its price for the project and expressed desire to support future school projects.

Can you believe that in many schools in remote and poor regions of China, students don’t have one single book to read except the textbook?

In that context, every extra-curriculum book is opening a new world to the students. And CTEF has been doing so to help open the world one after another. Starting in 2008 with the partnership with the Our Free Sky (an non-for-profit org with similar mission), CTEF has donated over 20,000 books to 9 school libraries in Sichuan, Hunan and Yunnan provinces, helping 3656 students.

Maria and James Koh are CTEF’s first couple donors. During the Japan-China War, Maria served as a volunteer “Little Teacher” to the refugee kids. This experience convinced her that education is the foundation of self-assurance. James also believes that higher education means better use of one’s wisdom and empowers one with life time fulfillment. The couple was impressed by the dedication and commitment of CTEF founders. They consecutively donated to CTEF and helped to build schools and improved school facilities for teachers and students in poor areas.

Library books donated by the Kohs

In 10 years, CTEF has grown significantly but they have carried on these early beliefs. The Kohs are also the founders of the library project. With Waisiu’s help, they published three volumes of colorful bilingual children story books with accompanying CDs. CTEF distributed about 5000 copies a year freely to children in rural area.

CTEF not only provide financial help to students, but also encourage donors to communicate with students and provide mental help.

This is a good example of this effort. She is a high school student in Hubei province. Both parents have chronic disease and the family has low income. She is a good student and won English and composition competition. CTEF gave her financial aid through 1+1 program.

Letter from a student to her donor

When communicating with donor, she mentioned that she had difficulty in math study. The donor encouraged her and gave her some suggestions based on her situation. Her math improved quite a bit in several months.

This is what her mother wrote to donor: ‘She did not do well in math last semester. Her teacher told me she was very sad after she knew her math grade. Luckily she felt better when she came back from school several days ago and worked harder, especially math study. She told me that you encouraged her in email and taught her how to study math. She was very thankful and told me she would do her best to catch up. ’

The student told her donor several months later: ‘My math has improved and I know its importance now. I am motivated and I will keep on my effort.’