Roots and Shoots Service Project

As I mentioned earlier this week, I will be spending the last week of July in rural China as a part of a service project.

This project will take place in the rural village of Yangshan in Anhui province. I am so pumped about this project that I can hardly describe it. I have been reading up on this area and most of what I read makes my heart break. Anhui is an area in China with one of the highest poverty and illiteracy rates. In Shanghai 3.81% of the population is illiterate. In Anhui the illiteracy rate is 13.35%. The factors of poverty in this area are multi-dimensional. One cause is that many of the working age men and women leave the to go into the big cities (like Shanghai) to find work. Often they will leave behind their child (or children) with their parents, which leaves most of the villages full of grandparents taking care of children. There are other many other factors that contributed to this province getting ‘left behind’ while other areas near by (in the Yangtze Delta) quickly increased their standards of living. If you have free time you should totally google it and read up. Or about any of the other bajillion places like this in the world. Or about any other issue you are strongly concerned about. Here is a website about previous Roots and Shoots projects in Yangshan Village  http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2010-0…).

ANYWAY, our group will be bringing some supplies (hygiene kits, meal kits, and new uniforms and shoes) for each of the students at the primary school of Yangshan village. Four people from my program were selected for this project and so we will partner with Roots and Shoots volunteers from Shanghai to help deliver the stuff, teach a few English language lessons and lessons about basic hygiene. I have an all day training session for the project on Saturday. Of the four of us Americans going, I’m the one with the least amount of Chinese language skills.