Great Achievements in The Second China Youth Volunteer Service Project Competition

Recently, jointly organized by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, the Central Civilization Office, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, China Disabled Persons' Federation, China Federation of Volunteer Service, the Chongqing Municipal People's Government, the Chinese Youth Volunteers Association and other eight organizations, the second China Youth Volunteer Services Competition and the Chongqing Volunteer Service Exchange Meeting concluded in Chongqing. Our school’s "No Longer Alone" Project for Helping the Disabled and "Dandelion EQ &IQ Development Training Program" Project for Caring for Left-behind Children in Rural Area won gold and silver medals respectively.

"No Longer Alone" Project for Helping the Disabled is a public-interest project initiated by the Enactus of the Youth League. Since its establishment in November 2012, this project has been based on the Disabled Foster Care Service Center located in Hongshan Street Xuanwu District as a pilot project, devoting to autistic children’s rehabilitation and social integration. The project team did independent R&D for their TCEP mode (Technique-technical feasibility studies, Course- curriculum design, Experience center, Parents Assistance): Utilizing the cultural resources advantage of our university, relying on relative professional guidance of Professors in Students Volunteer Service Projects, improving rehabilitation programs for autistic children; transferring from traditional escort method to allowing autistic children to participate in social experiences, improving their ability and level of social integration through planting and selling mushrooms; achieving a virtuous cycle for the project by mushroom planting and sales; establishing the autistic children rehabilitation tracking system for timely feedback of the project performance; calling for more caring people from all walks of life to care for children with autism and providing more assistance through new media. There were more than 300 volunteers from our university who joined this project. They launched the "Agricultural to Community Career Experience" activities in a dozen communities including Huitong community, which attracted more than 800 caring citizens to participate in. Since the implementation of the project, it has made benefits of 3,500 yuan per capita for 33 autistic children, equivalent to nearly 30% of their yearly tuition fee. The rehabilitation follow-up assessment showed that 90 percent of children with autism who were helped exercised and improved their sensory ability, abilities to accept information and capacity of adaptive response.
    
"Dandelion EQ & IQ Development Training Program" Project for Caring for Left-behind Children in Rural Area is a public-interest project launched by our university’s seventeenth graduate teaching mission Guizhou team independently, aiming at further enhancing the learning capacity and effectiveness of the left-behind children, and promoting the sound development of mental health in order to achieve the purpose of promoting the comprehensive development of left-behind children. Looking from a psychological perspective, with self-confidence, empathy, responsibility and resilience, learning ability, ability to cooperate as the theme, this project designed group counseling main-thread courses to expand activities, voluntary service, self-awareness and behavior record , helped to increase subordinate plans by the assistance of support plans, combined with the local existing social support system for left-behind children to strengthen it.  According to a sample survey, during the implementation of this project, the EQ and IQ scores of modules covered achieved by the left-behind children we cared for have significantly improved and so were their living and studying conditions.
    
At the awarding ceremony, the video about our "No Longer Alone" Project for Helping the Disabled was displayed, showing the good image of not afraid of difficulties, selfless dedication and service of our volunteers, and was acclaimed by the leadership and guests presented. Song Yuxuan, one of the volunteers of this project, an undergraduate majoring in Applied Psychology from the Honors College of 2012 , accepted the special interview by the vice president of China Volunteers Association and the famous host Bai Yansong, which lasted for five minutes, as the only Gold award representative of the Project of Helping the Disabled and the alike.
    
Expert judges agreed that our project had a complete mode, distinctive features, prominent theme, a strong professional and systematic touch, and it was repeatable and easy to promote. Our project also received intensive attention from the representatives of other projects, caring entrepreneurs, experts and scholars of autism socialization area all came to our stand to visit and exchange opinions, and more than ten entities had reached a preliminary cooperation intention with our university.
    
The Chinese Youth Volunteer Service Project Competition, which has been held twice successfully, is a highly professional authoritative event with wide coverage, currently facing the government departments, enterprises and institutions, professional and social welfare organizations, universities and other departments, organizing and calling for volunteer service projects and appraising them through comparison. The 9 projects called for are public-interest, including projects of helping the disabled, caring for children of migrant workers, neighborhood watch and caring for the old, environmental protection and water conservation and protection, poverty alleviation and development and emergency relief, culture promotion and network civilization, anti-drug education and legal services, theoretical research and infrastructure construction, etc.. According to the type and number of those projects, the assessment was divided into nine groups, by reviewing the material, focused discussion, scoring and ranking, writing reviews, etc., 500 projects were selected to compete in the national finals out of 5509 volunteer service projects from 38 provincial tournament units, and finally decided the 100 Gold and 397 Silver awards.