To highlight the UIC 5th Anniversary Celebration and promote the spirit of voluntary service, UIC WPE Voluntary Service Development Center, Shanghai Cherished Dream Charity Foundation, Guangzhou Lighthouse, and UIC United Innovation Charity Club (UICC) jointly launched the "UIC• Cherished Dream• Lighthouse Voluntary Teaching Program" on March 17th at UIC. The program aims at enhancing the rural educational environment by helping teachers learn and apply new quality education model. The program is not exclusively open to UIC teachers and students. Applications have come from other seven universities in Zhuhai and Macau, including the University of Macau, Sun Yat-Sen University (Zhuhai Campus), and Jinan Unviersity (Zhuhai Campus), etc.
Group Interview
The first round of interview was arranged on April 10th and 11th at UIC. 67 students and 27 teachers were admitted, among which 52 students and 24 teachers were from UIC. The enrollment at UIC has come to an end, but is still on-going at the other 7 universities.
In order to provide qualified volunteers to support the program, applicants must pass a group interview and an individual interview. Applicants' motivation, language capacity, leadership, and teamwork are all considered. Mr. Pan Changxue, Chairperson of Shanghai Cherished Dream Charity Foundation, spoke highly of UIC students' innovative thinking and teamwork capacity.
The volunteers who passed the interview will join a 6-day training session, including outdoor experiential development, introduction to Dream Courses, notes for living in the countryside, etc. After the training, volunteers will become supervisors or facilitators and go to the countryside to help rural teachers apply the "facilitators" way of teaching. Those volunteers who receive the qualification of "Primary Dream Course Coach" will go to Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou, and Gansu to teach. Every volunteer will supervise rural teachers for 5 to 7 days in 3 different schools. The whole teaching program will last for 20 days. The Shanghai Cherished Dream Charity Foundation is planning to set up more than 100 "Dream Centers" in rural areas in China. Before the training session, every volunteer will have a chance to practice at Jinfeng Middle School in Zhuhai.
"UIC always emphasizes ‘voluntary services' and ‘service leadership'. Our previous programs mainly focused on cultivating students' voluntary service skills and accumulating experience in participating rural development. This special voluntary teaching program will train volunteers as professional trainers to help the rural teachers promote ‘Dream Courses', said Mr. Yang Rongzheng from UIC WPE Voluntary Service Development Center. Dr. Haipeng Guo also pointed out that the voluntary spirit is something internal in everyone's heart.
"This program will give us a more comprehensive understanding of Whole Person Education. I really want to share my experience in UIC with the children living in the countryside." said Wang, a year-two student at UIC.
Report in Chinese: Huang Shanqing
Translator: Candy Chou
Editor: Richard Xu
Media & Public Relations Office
