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Sunrise Library Opening Ceremony Report
By Albert Hu
October 9, 2007
We left Shanghai on Wednesday and when we arrived in Zhoukou it has become dark. The next day, we got up very early, rushed to Wang Dao Ping. We were surprised to find the students and teachers were standing in a line outside the school gate greeting us.
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| We were surprised to find the students were waiting us | |
The ceremony went just as we expected, including address and programs presented by Sunrise volunteers and students of Wang Dao Ping.
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| Girls were dancing with smile | Principal Liu was singing with Xu Jiafei |
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| Xinhua dictionaries were not only the gifts also our best wishes! |
In the afternoon, one of the volunteers, Sun Yi taught about 20 students to draw many interesting things on four big pieces of canvas which would be used as the curtain of the library room as a very meaningful memory. We can see the students were really enjoying it. Then we volunteers had several group photos with students and teachers. After that, the ceremony was over at about 16:30.
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| Sun Yi were showing kids how to draw some interesting pictures |
See! How absorbed she was |
On the whole, the activity was a success. The spirit and passion of Sunrise Library volunteers was high, the warmly welcome of locals was impressive, the interaction between volunteers and students was out of problem. Mostly, all participants were happy. But still, tiny flaw was kind of inevitable I think, when the volunteers took out the gifts they prepared, the students were a little bit out of order which was something we didn't like to see.
During the opening ceremony, I had a personal talk with the principal Mr. Liu. He gave me a letter, wanted me to give it to you. The main purpose of this letter was asking HQF to add investment to finish the playground, flag-raising platform and parterre, etc. But I can see he was focusing on the hardware. So I made it very clear that the hardware is important which HQF will consider their requirements but no promise was made, however, the software is really the thing what we think much of, including the passion of teachers to serve, the relationship between teachers and students, the relationship between teachers and students' parents, style of study, morality and academic progress. All these things are much more important than parterre, of course. And it won't be easy to achieve these, but we need to see the trend.
By conversation with Mr. Liu, I believe he can be a good principal with responsibility and capability. So I think what we should do is to encourage him to do a good job without too much intervene, showing supportive sometimes and then be patient, try to keep in touch to see how it's going. After all, he do know much more about rural education than us, if he don't want to show initiative, what we can do is limited and it's very likely to make us stick in the mud.
By the way, Principal Liu mentioned the teachers don't have desks right now and need our help, which I think way beyond the line between us. We shouldn't let them think they can rely on HQF on anything even it can be solved by themselves.
By the way, maybe related, moments during the trip made me feel a little bit uncomfortable, which is some volunteers of Sunrise Library questioned the cost of the school. It's said the Hope Project can build a primary school only by 300 thousand yuan. Maybe the inflation, or different prices in different places, or the size of the school is different, I don't know. I'd like to check it out since cost-efficiency should be one of our priorities.
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| It's our joint achievement |
Reported by
Albert Hu
HuaQiao Foundation
www.huaqiaofoundation.org
Tel: (8621) 3209- 5550
Fax: (8621) 3209- 5578
HuaQiao Foundation
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