BYU Kennedy Center China Teachers Share Love of Service
Brigham Young University counsels its Kennedy Center “China Teachers” to remember, “You can’t change China.” With 1.3 billion people and a recorded history of over 5,000 years, the culture has a lot of momentum. One person really can’t make a difference. Trying to make a change can drive you crazy.
Apparently, no one told Becky Mitchell.
Becky first came to China with her husband Ken in the fall of 2000 to teach at Shandong Medical University in Jinan for one year as part of the BYU Kennedy Center program. They returned in 2002 to teach English at Nanjing University, staying through the spring semester of 2003 and returned home. Apparently, they left something—perhaps a piece of their hearts—in China, because they returned again to teach—this time in Beijing—for a semester in the spring of 2004. This was the last of their service eligible for formal participation in the BYU program.
It seems that Becky still didn’t feel like she’d finished what she came to do, so she returned with Ken in the fall of 2009 to teach at Nanjing University. When I met her in the spring of 2012, she reluctantly acknowledged that this would likely be her last year in China.
For Becky, teaching English was an excuse to share her love of service with China. While there are innumerable kind people in China, organized volunteering is relatively new—something that began emerging in the 1980s and is becoming genuinely fashionable among high school and college students in modern China, but for most people here it is something you do once or twice to say you’ve done it.
Back in 2002, Becky was assigned to teach some classes on a satellite campus of Nanjing University one day each week. The campus was in Pukou, across the Yangtze River from Nanjing, requiring her to travel about an hour in each direction. With both a morning and an afternoon class, she had time to fill at lunch. I can’t help but think that a real English teacher would have relished this time to read each day, but as I told you, Becky is not a real English teacher. Instead, she invited her students to join her each week for “leadership training.”
She was surprised that most of her students chose to participate in this optional leadership training session each week. As the semester wore on, Becky drew on her years of experience with 4-H to form her leadership group into a 4-H chapter. They decided to do two things that turned out to have an enduring impact. First, they decided to have a Christmas party, complete with a Santa Claus (played by Ken) and to raise money at the party for a yet to be defined program to help needy children that they would later call “The Sunshine Project.”
For the party, the students built a beautifully decorated donation box with signs suggesting donations to help needy children. The students contributed about $100 as a group at the party.
During this same semester, Becky was also teaching English to faculty who participated on a volunteer basis to improve their English (which is helpful, especially for publishing academic papers). Becky became close with some of the teachers and invited them over to her apartment on Christmas Eve where the teachers saw the beautifully decorated donation box and also contributed. Three of them—later joined by a fourth faculty friend—were particularly eager to help and wanted to know what they could do to be involved.
Becky asked the four to help find a project that they could undertake using the funds they’d raised. She especially wanted to find something where she could involve the student volunteers in helping with the project, not just donating money and sending it along.
One of the teachers, Hua Wei Na, an Information Science professor, found two schools in a distant, rural suburb of Nanjing that were interested in the help from the University volunteers. Becky and Wei Na visited the two schools. At the larger of the two, the school was able to quickly articulate uses for the money, but could not articulate a need for the volunteers.
At the other school, Gao Chuan Special Education School, a much smaller and less well-funded boarding school for deaf children, they were eager to have the volunteers get involved to provide an opportunity for their children to interact with hearing people—an opportunity that they rarely had. They also learned that their money could be used to enroll more students at the school who couldn’t otherwise attend, but who also needed the special programs it offered.
It was exactly what they had been hoping to find. Working together with students, the four teachers and Becky, they organized a “Fun Field Day” to visit the little school in Gao Chuan. On that first visit, they rounded up several used computers and bought a new printer. They didn’t just drop them off; they took them in and set them up, connecting them to the internet.
These were the first computers in the school. Imagine the difference it made in the lives of these students who had not had an opportunity to use a computer before and had little means of communicating with people outside the deaf community to suddenly be introduced to email, allowing them to establish relationships with anyone in the world. Immediately, relationships began to blossom between the university students and young children at the Gao Chuan school.
Since those early days nearly ten years ago, two of the students from the school, later qualified to attend a special school in Nanjing for high school and then enrolled at a university. It is hard to imagine them accomplishing that without the benefit of the computers and mentors provided by the Sunshine Project.
Every semester now for almost ten years the Sunshine Project has continued to make visits to the school and to provide money to enroll more students who cannot afford to pay on their own. Initially, the Sunshine Project funded scholarships for seven students and that has grown now to twenty, representing one out of every six of the 120 students at the special school. In addition to scholarships, they help the school with uniforms, computers, milk, t-shirts and other needs. In all, they now donate 5,000 RMB (about $750) every semester.
Even during Becky’s years at home in the U.S., she has continued to stay involved, raising money from family and friends, including members of her ward, and donating goods to help the Sunshine Program continue its work.
The special school has evolved over the years, too. With more government funding, they now have new facilities and a larger enrollment. In addition to students with hearing impairments, the school began enrolling students with intellectually challenges; this group has become much larger than the deaf group.
Front to back: Becky Mitchell, Huang Xin Yi, Cao Shu Fen, Fu Cong, Liu Yan Hua, Chai Xiang Nan, Cheng Hui and Wang Zai Yu.
In Becky’s small apartment, I met with her and the current crop of student leaders who organize the activities for the Sunshine Project. They told me about some of their feelings and experiences being involved.
Huang Xin Yi who uses the name Amelia with her English-speaking friends, has been volunteering with the group for three years. She is now the President of the 4-H club, which works actively with the Sunshine Project to keep it going. Of the students they help, she noted, “They are really lovely, and caring. When the deaf children visit Nanjing University, you cannot speak with them, but you learn a lot from them.” Xin Yi will be graduating in 2012 and will be starting a graduate program in translation and interpretation in the fall at Wuhan University.
Cheng Hui, who uses the English name Laura, is an English major who has been volunteering with the Sunshine Project for several years. She will start her Masters program in Education at Harvard in the fall of 2012. Hui has built a relationship with a young boy who is intellectually challenged and who now thinks of her like a sister. He some times calls her just to ask one question, “When will you come back?” It saddened her to have to explain to him that she was leaving and he would have a new sister. She is proud, however, that she has been a part of an ongoing volunteer effort, noting that one-time volunteer projects are far more common in China, but offer far less benefit to both the volunteers and those they help.
Fu Cong, or Smile, has been volunteering with the Sunshine Project since 2009. She is also an English major; she will continue her study at Nanjing University next year in the Masters program in Religion. She says, “I love to play with the children. I don’t just observe them, I play with them.” Cong organized a campaign to provide stuffed animals for all of the children at the school for Christmas in 2011. She notes her appreciation for the leadership opportunities she’s had with her involvement in the Sunshine Project.
Liu Yan Hua, or Ida, is a PhD candidate in Information Sciences who got involved when she was an undergraduate student studying with Hua Wei Na. She remembers her first visit to the school, playing with young children ages four to seven and they “didn’t want us to leave.”
Chai Xiang Nan, or Aki, who is in the first year of his Masters program in Sociology, observed during his visits that there really is no need for boundaries among people who are differently abled, “we are all united.” He rejects the labels assigned to “normal” and intellectually challenged students, noting, “We are all one society.”
Cao Shu Fen, Penny, who is in the first year of her Masters in Finance program, was touched by her experience with a young boy who had difficulty with his right arm. She wanted to help him with his coat, but he insisted on doing it himself. She notes, “they are strong and they inspire us.”
Wang Zai Yu, John, who is now in graduate school studying Atmospheric Sciences and will enroll at George Mason University for his PhD this fall, has been volunteering with the Sunshine Project for three years, commented on the value of the experience to him, suggesting that it has changed his life as much or more than the students they help. “The whole process is so pure,” he says.
Over dinner with Becky, I met with two of the four women who have been the guiding force for the Sunshine Project over the last ten years.
Hua Wei Na, from the Information Science department, has served as the liaison with the school since she first identified it as a candidate back in the early weeks of 2003. She has also involved her daughter, now in college, but who got involved as a middle-schooler with some of her friends. Wei Na noted that the experience has been formative for her as well.
Jin Jian, or Jane, is a law professor specializing in housing law. She, too, has been involved since Christmas Eve in 2002. She has served very effectively as the treasurer and accountant for the Sunshine Project, in addition to providing leadership continuity and passion for the project. Independent of the Sunshine Project, Jian has also sponsored two students who couldn’t afford to attend the school on their own. Jian noted that she learned a lot from the teachers at the Gao Chuan school, who demonstrate genuine love for their students. Jian has learned to love her students and they love her in return. That is a real change for a Chinese teacher who likely never had a teacher who loved her.
Gao Feng Hua and Jing Hong are the last of the “awesome foursome” as Becky calls them. Gao Feng Hua teaches Taiji Quan in the Physical Education Department. Jing Hong teaches Geology and Earth Sciences. Both are internationally recognized for their work.
Together, these four women, coordinating with Becky wherever she may be in the world, have provided the leadership and continuity to keep the Sunshine Project going for ten years, blessing hundreds of children and countless volunteers along the way.
One of the most exciting things to come from the Sunshine Project is the inspiration it provides others to create their own service projects.
He Wen Jun, or Hermione (named for the character in the Harry Potter books), recognized that in her grandparents’ hometown, a small village called He Zhuang in the Gansu Province (about 24 hours by train from Nanjing), the school there would have very few resources and a great need for help. In the summer of 2011, she volunteered as a teacher there and observed that things were even worse than she had expected.
The school building itself was dangerous, featuring large cracks resulting from a 2003 earthquake. The playground consisted of an uneven dirt field with two basketball standards, one of which was broken, resting on its side where the kids would play, throwing their flat basketball through the vertical hoop. The teachers themselves had only a middle-school education.
When school started, Wen Jun got involved with the Sunshine Project and participated in the “Fun Field Day.” She was inspired. She recognized that she could organize her friends from her hometown—now scattered around the country in college—who understood the plight of the school to work to make things better for the students there.
“Miss Becky,” as her students call her, pledged her support and together they began fund raising, having both Halloween and Christmas parties to raise money for the new “Rainbow Project.”
Wen Jun also worked with her father to get the project officially registered with the government. She then made a visit in November of 2011 to begin organizing things for the project visit during the Chinese New Year holiday break (about six to eight weeks out of school for university students). On this visit, she met with Education Department of the local government to ask them to do something about the terrible conditions at the school.
She reported that their initial response was negative, indicating that there are countless schools in the region in equally bad shape. She convinced them that by making one school an example, they could inspire others. She pledged the support of the Rainbow Project and the government agreed to build five new classrooms at the school; she says that as of May 2012 construction has already started.
Back at Nanjing University she raced to organize her friends there and around the country to raise money. She also got help from Becky who raised money for the project when she got home for her Christmas break—again tapping family, friends and ward members. Becky also arranged for hats and mittens provided by LDS Humanitarian Services.
In total, Wen Jun and her friends raised 10,000 RMB (about $1,500) for her winter visit, when she was able to present the school with eight new computers and an internet connection to go along with the hats and mittens from America. These were the first computers that the students had ever seen, let alone used.
Becky will travel with Wen Jun to see the school in June and to do even more work there. For now, Wen Jun is focusing on ways to make the Rainbow Project as permanent as the Sunshine Project as she herself plans to continue her education in Hong Kong next year.
There is no doubt, however, that Wen Jun has already made her mark on the world, radically altering the reality facing the kids in her grandparents’ home town.
And Becky? Becky will return to the United States this summer knowing that China is becoming a very different place, in part because of the thousands of people she has influenced directly and indirectly as a teacher, a mentor and volunteer leader.
BYU Kennedy Center China Teachers Share Love of Service
Brigham Young University counsels its Kennedy Center “China Teachers” to remember, “You can’t change China.” With 1.3 billion people and a recorded history of over 5,000 years, the culture has a lot of momentum. One person really can’t make a difference. Trying to make a change can drive you crazy.
Apparently, no one told Becky Mitchell.
Becky first came to China with her husband Ken in the fall of 2000 to teach at Shandong Medical University in Jinan for one year as part of the BYU Kennedy Center program. They returned in 2002 to teach English at Nanjing University, staying through the spring semester of 2003 and returned home. Apparently, they left something—perhaps a piece of their hearts—in China, because they returned again to teach—this time in Beijing—for a semester in the spring of 2004. This was the last of their service eligible for formal participation in the BYU program.
It seems that Becky still didn’t feel like she’d finished what she came to do, so she returned with Ken in the fall of 2009 to teach at Nanjing University. When I met her in the spring of 2012, she reluctantly acknowledged that this would likely be her last year in China.
For Becky, teaching English was an excuse to share her love of service with China. While there are innumerable kind people in China, organized volunteering is relatively new—something that began emerging in the 1980s and is becoming genuinely fashionable among high school and college students in modern China, but for most people here it is something you do once or twice to say you’ve done it.
Back in 2002, Becky was assigned to teach some classes on a satellite campus of Nanjing University one day each week. The campus was in Pukou, across the Yangtze River from Nanjing, requiring her to travel about an hour in each direction. With both a morning and an afternoon class, she had time to fill at lunch. I can’t help but think that a real English teacher would have relished this time to read each day, but as I told you, Becky is not a real English teacher. Instead, she invited her students to join her each week for “leadership training.”
She was surprised that most of her students chose to participate in this optional leadership training session each week. As the semester wore on, Becky drew on her years of experience with 4-H to form her leadership group into a 4-H chapter. They decided to do two things that turned out to have an enduring impact. First, they decided to have a Christmas party, complete with a Santa Claus (played by Ken) and to raise money at the party for a yet to be defined program to help needy children that they would later call “The Sunshine Project.”
For the party, the students built a beautifully decorated donation box with signs suggesting donations to help needy children. The students contributed about $100 as a group at the party.
During this same semester, Becky was also teaching English to faculty who participated on a volunteer basis to improve their English (which is helpful, especially for publishing academic papers). Becky became close with some of the teachers and invited them over to her apartment on Christmas Eve where the teachers saw the beautifully decorated donation box and also contributed. Three of them—later joined by a fourth faculty friend—were particularly eager to help and wanted to know what they could do to be involved.
Becky asked the four to help find a project that they could undertake using the funds they’d raised. She especially wanted to find something where she could involve the student volunteers in helping with the project, not just donating money and sending it along.
One of the teachers, Hua Wei Na, an Information Science professor, found two schools in a distant, rural suburb of Nanjing that were interested in the help from the University volunteers. Becky and Wei Na visited the two schools. At the larger of the two, the school was able to quickly articulate uses for the money, but could not articulate a need for the volunteers.
At the other school, Gao Chuan Special Education School, a much smaller and less well-funded boarding school for deaf children, they were eager to have the volunteers get involved to provide an opportunity for their children to interact with hearing people—an opportunity that they rarely had. They also learned that their money could be used to enroll more students at the school who couldn’t otherwise attend, but who also needed the special programs it offered.
It was exactly what they had been hoping to find. Working together with students, the four teachers and Becky, they organized a “Fun Field Day” to visit the little school in Gao Chuan. On that first visit, they rounded up several used computers and bought a new printer. They didn’t just drop them off; they took them in and set them up, connecting them to the internet.
These were the first computers in the school. Imagine the difference it made in the lives of these students who had not had an opportunity to use a computer before and had little means of communicating with people outside the deaf community to suddenly be introduced to email, allowing them to establish relationships with anyone in the world. Immediately, relationships began to blossom between the university students and young children at the Gao Chuan school.
Since those early days nearly ten years ago, two of the students from the school, later qualified to attend a special school in Nanjing for high school and then enrolled at a university. It is hard to imagine them accomplishing that without the benefit of the computers and mentors provided by the Sunshine Project.
Every semester now for almost ten years the Sunshine Project has continued to make visits to the school and to provide money to enroll more students who cannot afford to pay on their own. Initially, the Sunshine Project funded scholarships for seven students and that has grown now to twenty, representing one out of every six of the 120 students at the special school. In addition to scholarships, they help the school with uniforms, computers, milk, t-shirts and other needs. In all, they now donate 5,000 RMB (about $750) every semester.
Even during Becky’s years at home in the U.S., she has continued to stay involved, raising money from family and friends, including members of her ward, and donating goods to help the Sunshine Program continue its work.
The special school has evolved over the years, too. With more government funding, they now have new facilities and a larger enrollment. In addition to students with hearing impairments, the school began enrolling students with intellectually challenges; this group has become much larger than the deaf group.
Front to back: Becky Mitchell, Huang Xin Yi, Cao Shu Fen, Fu Cong, Liu Yan Hua, Chai Xiang Nan, Cheng Hui and Wang Zai Yu.
In Becky’s small apartment, I met with her and the current crop of student leaders who organize the activities for the Sunshine Project. They told me about some of their feelings and experiences being involved.
Huang Xin Yi who uses the name Amelia with her English-speaking friends, has been volunteering with the group for three years. She is now the President of the 4-H club, which works actively with the Sunshine Project to keep it going. Of the students they help, she noted, “They are really lovely, and caring. When the deaf children visit Nanjing University, you cannot speak with them, but you learn a lot from them.” Xin Yi will be graduating in 2012 and will be starting a graduate program in translation and interpretation in the fall at Wuhan University.
Cheng Hui, who uses the English name Laura, is an English major who has been volunteering with the Sunshine Project for several years. She will start her Masters program in Education at Harvard in the fall of 2012. Hui has built a relationship with a young boy who is intellectually challenged and who now thinks of her like a sister. He some times calls her just to ask one question, “When will you come back?” It saddened her to have to explain to him that she was leaving and he would have a new sister. She is proud, however, that she has been a part of an ongoing volunteer effort, noting that one-time volunteer projects are far more common in China, but offer far less benefit to both the volunteers and those they help.
Fu Cong, or Smile, has been volunteering with the Sunshine Project since 2009. She is also an English major; she will continue her study at Nanjing University next year in the Masters program in Religion. She says, “I love to play with the children. I don’t just observe them, I play with them.” Cong organized a campaign to provide stuffed animals for all of the children at the school for Christmas in 2011. She notes her appreciation for the leadership opportunities she’s had with her involvement in the Sunshine Project.
Liu Yan Hua, or Ida, is a PhD candidate in Information Sciences who got involved when she was an undergraduate student studying with Hua Wei Na. She remembers her first visit to the school, playing with young children ages four to seven and they “didn’t want us to leave.”
Chai Xiang Nan, or Aki, who is in the first year of his Masters program in Sociology, observed during his visits that there really is no need for boundaries among people who are differently abled, “we are all united.” He rejects the labels assigned to “normal” and intellectually challenged students, noting, “We are all one society.”
Cao Shu Fen, Penny, who is in the first year of her Masters in Finance program, was touched by her experience with a young boy who had difficulty with his right arm. She wanted to help him with his coat, but he insisted on doing it himself. She notes, “they are strong and they inspire us.”
Wang Zai Yu, John, who is now in graduate school studying Atmospheric Sciences and will enroll at George Mason University for his PhD this fall, has been volunteering with the Sunshine Project for three years, commented on the value of the experience to him, suggesting that it has changed his life as much or more than the students they help. “The whole process is so pure,” he says.
Over dinner with Becky, I met with two of the four women who have been the guiding force for the Sunshine Project over the last ten years.
Hua Wei Na, from the Information Science department, has served as the liaison with the school since she first identified it as a candidate back in the early weeks of 2003. She has also involved her daughter, now in college, but who got involved as a middle-schooler with some of her friends. Wei Na noted that the experience has been formative for her as well.
Jin Jian, or Jane, is a law professor specializing in housing law. She, too, has been involved since Christmas Eve in 2002. She has served very effectively as the treasurer and accountant for the Sunshine Project, in addition to providing leadership continuity and passion for the project. Independent of the Sunshine Project, Jian has also sponsored two students who couldn’t afford to attend the school on their own. Jian noted that she learned a lot from the teachers at the Gao Chuan school, who demonstrate genuine love for their students. Jian has learned to love her students and they love her in return. That is a real change for a Chinese teacher who likely never had a teacher who loved her.
Gao Feng Hua and Jing Hong are the last of the “awesome foursome” as Becky calls them. Gao Feng Hua teaches Taiji Quan in the Physical Education Department. Jing Hong teaches Geology and Earth Sciences. Both are internationally recognized for their work.
Together, these four women, coordinating with Becky wherever she may be in the world, have provided the leadership and continuity to keep the Sunshine Project going for ten years, blessing hundreds of children and countless volunteers along the way.
One of the most exciting things to come from the Sunshine Project is the inspiration it provides others to create their own service projects.
He Wen Jun, or Hermione (named for the character in the Harry Potter books), recognized that in her grandparents’ hometown, a small village called He Zhuang in the Gansu Province (about 24 hours by train from Nanjing), the school there would have very few resources and a great need for help. In the summer of 2011, she volunteered as a teacher there and observed that things were even worse than she had expected.
The school building itself was dangerous, featuring large cracks resulting from a 2003 earthquake. The playground consisted of an uneven dirt field with two basketball standards, one of which was broken, resting on its side where the kids would play, throwing their flat basketball through the vertical hoop. The teachers themselves had only a middle-school education.
When school started, Wen Jun got involved with the Sunshine Project and participated in the “Fun Field Day.” She was inspired. She recognized that she could organize her friends from her hometown—now scattered around the country in college—who understood the plight of the school to work to make things better for the students there.
“Miss Becky,” as her students call her, pledged her support and together they began fund raising, having both Halloween and Christmas parties to raise money for the new “Rainbow Project.”
Wen Jun also worked with her father to get the project officially registered with the government. She then made a visit in November of 2011 to begin organizing things for the project visit during the Chinese New Year holiday break (about six to eight weeks out of school for university students). On this visit, she met with Education Department of the local government to ask them to do something about the terrible conditions at the school.
She reported that their initial response was negative, indicating that there are countless schools in the region in equally bad shape. She convinced them that by making one school an example, they could inspire others. She pledged the support of the Rainbow Project and the government agreed to build five new classrooms at the school; she says that as of May 2012 construction has already started.
Back at Nanjing University she raced to organize her friends there and around the country to raise money. She also got help from Becky who raised money for the project when she got home for her Christmas break—again tapping family, friends and ward members. Becky also arranged for hats and mittens provided by LDS Humanitarian Services.
In total, Wen Jun and her friends raised 10,000 RMB (about $1,500) for her winter visit, when she was able to present the school with eight new computers and an internet connection to go along with the hats and mittens from America. These were the first computers that the students had ever seen, let alone used.
Becky will travel with Wen Jun to see the school in June and to do even more work there. For now, Wen Jun is focusing on ways to make the Rainbow Project as permanent as the Sunshine Project as she herself plans to continue her education in Hong Kong next year.
There is no doubt, however, that Wen Jun has already made her mark on the world, radically altering the reality facing the kids in her grandparents’ home town.
And Becky? Becky will return to the United States this summer knowing that China is becoming a very different place, in part because of the thousands of people she has influenced directly and indirectly as a teacher, a mentor and volunteer leader.
Page 2 of 3
In Becky’s small apartment, I met with her and the current crop of student leaders who organize the activities for the Sunshine Project. They told me about some of their feelings and experiences being involved.
Huang Xin Yi who uses the name Amelia with her English-speaking friends, has been volunteering with the group for three years. She is now the President of the 4-H club, which works actively with the Sunshine Project to keep it going. Of the students they help, she noted, “They are really lovely, and caring. When the deaf children visit Nanjing University, you cannot speak with them, but you learn a lot from them.” Xin Yi will be graduating in 2012 and will be starting a graduate program in translation and interpretation in the fall at Wuhan University.
Cheng Hui, who uses the English name Laura, is an English major who has been volunteering with the Sunshine Project for several years. She will start her Masters program in Education at Harvard in the fall of 2012. Hui has built a relationship with a young boy who is intellectually challenged and who now thinks of her like a sister. He some times calls her just to ask one question, “When will you come back?” It saddened her to have to explain to him that she was leaving and he would have a new sister. She is proud, however, that she has been a part of an ongoing volunteer effort, noting that one-time volunteer projects are far more common in China, but offer far less benefit to both the volunteers and those they help.
Fu Cong, or Smile, has been volunteering with the Sunshine Project since 2009. She is also an English major; she will continue her study at Nanjing University next year in the Masters program in Religion. She says, “I love to play with the children. I don’t just observe them, I play with them.” Cong organized a campaign to provide stuffed animals for all of the children at the school for Christmas in 2011. She notes her appreciation for the leadership opportunities she’s had with her involvement in the Sunshine Project.
Liu Yan Hua, or Ida, is a PhD candidate in Information Sciences who got involved when she was an undergraduate student studying with Hua Wei Na. She remembers her first visit to the school, playing with young children ages four to seven and they “didn’t want us to leave.”
Chai Xiang Nan, or Aki, who is in the first year of his Masters program in Sociology, observed during his visits that there really is no need for boundaries among people who are differently abled, “we are all united.” He rejects the labels assigned to “normal” and intellectually challenged students, noting, “We are all one society.”
Cao Shu Fen, Penny, who is in the first year of her Masters in Finance program, was touched by her experience with a young boy who had difficulty with his right arm. She wanted to help him with his coat, but he insisted on doing it himself. She notes, “they are strong and they inspire us.”
Wang Zai Yu, John, who is now in graduate school studying Atmospheric Sciences and will enroll at George Mason University for his PhD this fall, has been volunteering with the Sunshine Project for three years, commented on the value of the experience to him, suggesting that it has changed his life as much or more than the students they help. “The whole process is so pure,” he says.
Over dinner with Becky, I met with two of the four women who have been the guiding force for the Sunshine Project over the last ten years.
Hua Wei Na, from the Information Science department, has served as the liaison with the school since she first identified it as a candidate back in the early weeks of 2003. She has also involved her daughter, now in college, but who got involved as a middle-schooler with some of her friends. Wei Na noted that the experience has been formative for her as well.
Jin Jian, or Jane, is a law professor specializing in housing law. She, too, has been involved since Christmas Eve in 2002. She has served very effectively as the treasurer and accountant for the Sunshine Project, in addition to providing leadership continuity and passion for the project. Independent of the Sunshine Project, Jian has also sponsored two students who couldn’t afford to attend the school on their own. Jian noted that she learned a lot from the teachers at the Gao Chuan school, who demonstrate genuine love for their students. Jian has learned to love her students and they love her in return. That is a real change for a Chinese teacher who likely never had a teacher who loved her.
Gao Feng Hua and Jing Hong are the last of the “awesome foursome” as Becky calls them. Gao Feng Hua teaches Taiji Quan in the Physical Education Department. Jing Hong teaches Geology and Earth Sciences. Both are internationally recognized for their work.
Together, these four women, coordinating with Becky wherever she may be in the world, have provided the leadership and continuity to keep the Sunshine Project going for ten years, blessing hundreds of children and countless volunteers along the way.
One of the most exciting things to come from the Sunshine Project is the inspiration it provides others to create their own service projects.
He Wen Jun, or Hermione (named for the character in the Harry Potter books), recognized that in her grandparents’ hometown, a small village called He Zhuang in the Gansu Province (about 24 hours by train from Nanjing), the school there would have very few resources and a great need for help. In the summer of 2011, she volunteered as a teacher there and observed that things were even worse than she had expected.
The school building itself was dangerous, featuring large cracks resulting from a 2003 earthquake. The playground consisted of an uneven dirt field with two basketball standards, one of which was broken, resting on its side where the kids would play, throwing their flat basketball through the vertical hoop. The teachers themselves had only a middle-school education.
When school started, Wen Jun got involved with the Sunshine Project and participated in the “Fun Field Day.” She was inspired. She recognized that she could organize her friends from her hometown—now scattered around the country in college—who understood the plight of the school to work to make things better for the students there.
“Miss Becky,” as her students call her, pledged her support and together they began fund raising, having both Halloween and Christmas parties to raise money for the new “Rainbow Project.”
Wen Jun also worked with her father to get the project officially registered with the government. She then made a visit in November of 2011 to begin organizing things for the project visit during the Chinese New Year holiday break (about six to eight weeks out of school for university students). On this visit, she met with Education Department of the local government to ask them to do something about the terrible conditions at the school.
She reported that their initial response was negative, indicating that there are countless schools in the region in equally bad shape.
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