Community Outreach Merit Program

The Gansu service learning tour was come to an end; in the learning tour, we approached the Jubilee Care Primary School (JCPS, 禧福愛心小學) in Chankou(巉口), Gansu(甘肅). As one of the participants, I think this learning tour had brought benefit to following groups.

1.The Teachers
Our team provide IT training courses to the teachers of the school. The IT training courses covered the usage of web browser, word processing software, spreadsheet software, etc. It is believed that those kinds of skill will definitely help the teachers in future.

2.The Students
Our team fixed up the computer laboratory, reconfigured the computers and set up a computer network in the school; meanwhile, we arranged various activities to students, like computer lessons, handcraft lesson, etc. It is believed that our work will still benefit the students even we return to Hong Kong.

3.“Us”
Through serving the people in JCPS, we have understood the place, the students, and us more. When seeing the students hugging our members tightly, our member smiling happily with the students; I can feel that our team member had put so much love to the students. I am sure that this learning tour is a memorable and valuable experience for the teachers, students and us.

The face and the body language of the kids running with one of our PolyU students says it all.

Today is the last full day of the Gansu leg of our service learning tour. It has been a very hard week, with lots of long hours, but I think that we’re all feeling that it was a very rewarding experience.

One of my most vivid memories comes from an incident today. Kobe and Lozen went over the IT infrastructure setup with the computer teacher here today, basically briefing her on what to do if something goes wrong. During the children’s evening gathering session tonight, Kobe took the opportunity to go over things with the teacher one more time, and also showed her the software installed on the computers for the children. Among the software is Google Earth. Kobe got her started by showing her the PolyU and also Lanzhou, and she was completely fascinated by the application. She picked it up from there and she then took the lead, showing us where she went to school, where she lived, and going on to check out places that she wanted to visit, such as Israel and Jerusalem.

It was totally wonderful and absolutely rewarding to “see the light come on”, so to speak. A good end to a very exhausting week.

We’ve been here for seven days. To be honest, it’s definitely NOT a comfortable luxury trip, but there were many many sweet moments.

I’m a member of Children’s team, responsible for taking care of the children there. It was tired to think of numerous games and activities for them to play, and it was exhausted for me to control the children. However, you’ll never find warmer feelings than being hugged and loved by the children there. They really treats me as a family member. Tomorrow is the day we leave the school. So today I have heard children asking me that was it really tomorrow we’ll depart.

Before the trip, I had no idea how naughty or intelligent or whatever they are. Knowing that I would probably be in charge of a group ON MY OWN, it really worried me. Luckily, my group is not naughty at all, and all of them are good-looking, hehe! =] (Agnes often mentioned that one girl in my group was very qute, and two boys were very handsome) I think it is not difficult (not easy though) for me to handle them.

Our group is called “Five Rings”, the olympic one, and our slogan is “Five Rings’ connected, We are united!” (in Chinese).
On Monday to Friday (today), we shot video, played small and big group games, did arts and crafts, had supper together etc. Not really followed the plan, but most activities were being held smoothly.

Tomorrow we’ll leave. I think I’ll miss them. Hope that I can keep contact with them.

Looking back this summer, I had a lot of experience of taking care children — Hubei, COMP summer camps, Christian Action camp, and Gansu this time, with children with different nationalities and ages. So shamed that I haven’t wrote anything here about them. Hope that I can do this as soon as possible, and wrote more more more details about this Gansu trip.

And I’m now heading to the hall. There’ll be a movie night. Their video will be shown to them. OK, see you ~

Today is Friday, the last day we will stay in Jubilee Cares Primary School. The first thing in the morning is, of course, singing. But we first have to gether all the kids in the hall and make sure everyone has a seat. Joyce, our singing teacher, taught them a new song called “天父看顾”(also called “野地的花”) which is a long song. but the kids learned it really fast. After that, it is computer time, the most exciting time for every kid. As the computer lab has only 6 PCs and there are about forty some kids, students are divided into two sessions and in each session, about 3-4 kids share one PC. Our big sisters and brothers downloaded some free game software which are meant to train the kids to use the computer mouse. They take turns to play the games, and they want to try all games before they are asked to leave.

Afternoon is photo taking time. We gather all kids and our team to the Hall. The hall is decorated with flowers and greenaries for the openning ceromony of the school. Kids always try to poke out their fingers with the “V” sign, and we have to force them to stop that. After that, we have group photo sessions followed by individual photo sessions. The individual ones are for their photo ID. Before each one takes a picture, we have to put his/her name on the writing board which serves as the background. Kids are shy when they are facing camera individually. So, we have to keep reminding them to say “茄子”.

During the waiting time for taking individual pictures, we have a English class. It seems that we try to have a English class everyday because I want my “Children” to learn something real useful from me, not just simple playing everday ( oh~ I know that making them feeling happy is important). I taught them ten words related to education. I almost asked them to repeat one hundred times for every word. I do feel tired, but I try to keep myself calm. However, there is a problem for me to handle because the English levels of different kids are quite different.So some of the children having higher English level was feeling bored when I was teaching the other children. Next time, when I prepare the teaching material, I will try to prepare different things for kids at different levels.( I hope there is a next time) .

The technical team(in case I have not mentioned it, we have two teams, one is the technical team responsible for fixing all the IT infrastructure, and the other team takes care of the kids) has been busy all day to get everything connected, and putting all the labels on all the equipments, making sure all lines are working properly, and the manuals are all in place. Sounds like some tidious work, but considering the limited knowledge the local staff knows about IT, all these are absolutely necessary.

Well, the day is not over yet. We are going to eat with the kids for dinner soon, sort of “the last supper”. After that, we will show the kids the videos and presentations that our team made which recorded many of the activities we did during this trip. Of course, we will end the day singing with the Kids. Following Prof. Lu Qin’s suggestion, we will teach the kids the Olympic song of 2008, “You and Me”(”我和你”).

So we’re here in Gansu, and one of our objectives is to set up the IT network and infrastructure for the Jubilee Cares Primary School here. Setting up the network isn’t all just computers and Ethernet and routers, though. In addition to the aforementioned stuff, on Sunday, we drilled holes in walls and installed plastic conduit trunkings for CAT5 cables. Today, we got a chance to jump into manholes to pull a fibre-optic wire to give Ethernet access to the staff who are staying in the dorm buildings. We also got to visit an underground storage cellar that resembled an underground farm of potatoes. Who would have imagined that Computing was that exciting!

And for those who were concerned about the fibre-optic cable installation, we got through the whole ordeal with only one injury, and that wasn’t too serious. Thank God that all that is done and working now!

For those who have not been following our work in Gansu, we are back at the Jubilee Primary School at Chankou town, DingXi city, Gansu province. This time they have expanded to 50 orphans, from the 20 in January. Our visiting team consists of 3 professors, 13 students, and one missionary.

The technical sub-team has to move the computer laboratory to a bigger room, install hardware and software to make the computers more resistant to viruses, and improve the network.

The teacher-training sub-team is teaching the teachers basic computer skills, to prepare teaching material, and to search for information on the Internet.

The student-summer-camp sub-team is teaching the students to make a video documentary on themselves, arts and crafts, and various games.

Some of us worked until 1:30 AM this morning. Everybody was tired but we are in high spirits. The computer network is coming along, and the kids are responding very warmly to us.

I am hearing more and more sad stories that break your heart. One 14 year old new comer girl is in primary 4. She has two brothers at Jubilee School, one of which is handicapped and the other has an eye problem; and she has 4 more siblings back home. It turned out that her grandparents are not her biological grandparents; they “picked” her up when she was orphaned as a baby. She does not even know what her original name was. Over the years her “grandparents” have picked up 40+ orphans, most of whom have either died, or been adopted by others. There are now only seven of them left …

@ PC Lab, 1:16a.m. right now

If Yvette was here with us, she would say “I HATE PRINTER SHARING” or “I HATE MICROSOFT” definitely… Well, we are trying to connect our Lab PCs to the Teacher-Workstation which shared the lab printer… But things go weird with Windows machines… After failed thousands of times, Grace just figured it out that the reason why we cannot connect it is due to the protected settings of IE7.0………………. So ridiculous…

Well…….. The main router is dead several minutes before. It’s really time for sleeping …. Nite~

Today is the 5th day in Gansu. It’s really a very great experience, especially for myself working in technical team. In these two days, our team all worked very late. Why did we work so late? The main problem was the stupid Vista… We set up a printer server for the PC Lab there. In that lab, all machines are installed Vista, but two are new machines. In theorically, our printer server setting is correct, as two new machines are work, but not the other five machines… Why? we don’t know… Then, today, we try to share the printer from teacher machine. We also face a problem - it also doesn’t work, and we don’t know why.
And now, we have two extra members (Springo and Lili to help us to set the PC for the printer sharing)
And Grace figure out this stupid problem at 00:35 (YEAH!). The stupid problem is due to the super stupid IE security setting!!! How come!!!

It is good to be back at the Jubilee School. As soon as we got off the bus, we saw some of the kids that we know from back in January. And they recognized us. It feels good to be back among them.

We arrived just in time for dinner, and went straight to work after dinner. The team in charge of the computer network went to check the network. The teams in charge of the teacher and student trainings met to fine tune their plans. This is despite having very little sleep Friday evening. Because we had to take a 4 AM bus from the PolyU to catch a 7:50 AM plane to Lanzhou, most of us had no more than one or two hours of sleep Friday evening.

This morning we got up about 7 am and went straight to work after breakfast, cleaning up the computers, installing software, installing the reborn cards, installing the trunking for the network cables, preparing the notes and exercises for the teachers, preparing the projects, games, arts and crafts for the children, …

Tomorrow we will start the sessions with the students and the teachers.