Friends Camp’s Education Supporting Project
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1/ Kind and established time of Friends Camp
2/ Schools which Friends Camp is running
3/ Contact information
a/ Volunteer teacher
1/ Volunteer teacher alternation system
2/ The recruitment of and requirement for volunteer teachers
3/ The training for volunteer teachers
4/ The subsidy and welfare for volunteer teachers
b/ The structure of the team of Friends Camp
1/ The structure of the team
2/ Departments of Friends Camp
3/ Financial rules
4/ Expenditure and the source of the fund
1/ Focusing on supporting education
2/ Pursue the goal of “long term” and “team work”
3/ To mediate not only knowledge but also moral, soul and a good character
1/ “12” and “950”
2/ “5” and “222”
1/ The goal of Friends Camp
2/ The strategy of supporting education
Friends Camp provides the chance of being educated for 800 children who have broken of their studying.
Friends Camp, which is an NGO, was established on Oct. 1st, 2006. Friends Camp focuses on long-term education supporting, to provide teachers continually for those children who live in the remote mountainous area and the children who live in the country, with their parents working in city. We hope to help to change their fortune thoroughly by education.
Friends Camp has been established for more than 5 years. At the beginning, we were a small team consisting of a few volunteers, and now we have built up 12 schools in Sichuan and Hunan province, providing about 51 teachers each semester. The total number of teachers we have provided since 2006 is 222, more than 950 children benefit from our project each year. Friends Camp is one of the most professional education-support NGOs in China. (Friends Camp’s official Website: www.hyy1996.com)
Friends Camp is now running 12 schools in Sichuan and Hunan province
The area is located in the depths of Hengduan Mountain, a minority area, an isolated and undeveloped place, where the education level is very low. Lack of teachers is badly in those schools in the villages. We have been running 7 schools in this place for 5 years, more than 800 children benefited from our project in these years (600 of the children had discontinued their study for lack of teachers or the school is too far away from their homes).
The problem in this place is that children here suffer from lack of care by their parents who have to make a living in the cities. Their grandparents, who are usually not well educated, sometimes even have to be taken care of by these children. Friends Camp has been running five schools in the villages since 2008, more than 150 children benefited from our project.
Friends Camp Education Supporting Project
Head of the team: Wu Jingxun
Cell phone: 0086-013924028151, QQ account: 36482789
E-mail address: Hyy5ge@gmail.com
Office address: Room 102, No.19, 8th lane, Guiye village, Shi(Shiken), Nanhai district
TEL: 0086-0757-86201996
Assistant: Miss Zhang
Cell phone: 0086-018925985996
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Only can a long-term stable team help the children
Friends Camp recruits volunteer teachers twice a year (once a semester). These volunteer teachers will have been teaching in the schools for one semester (half year) or two semesters (one year), then in the next semester/year, the teaching job will be taken by other new volunteer teachers, we call it “change system”, it helps to maintain the education stable and uninterrupted in the villages.
Each volunteer teacher spends half a year/one year on teaching in the village, it won’t lead them to abandon their families, leave the normal life and working state for too long, while they’re helping the children and enjoying the colorful teaching life.
We recruit the volunteer teachers mainly through internet. Volunteer teachers come from all around China, most of them are employees, parts of them are students fresh from college or in their practice period. In 2010, we started to cooperate with colleges and pedagogic schools in Guangdong and established branches in these schools to attract more volunteer teachers in the future.
Volunteer teacher should be:
.a/ Honest and virtuous, with open character;
.b/ Earnest and dedicated to the job of helping the children;
.c/ Accommodating and tolerant, with easy manner.
Since Dec. 2010, part of the volunteer teachers has a training in Foshan, trained by the professional teachers from Foshan Shiyan School/Tongji Elementary School before they start their job in Sichuan/Hunan. The professional teachers will visit the schools in Sichuan and Hunan every month to improve the volunteer teachers’ teaching skills.
Insurance: Friends Camp buys each volunteer teacher an accident & medical insurance, which the maximum amount in insurance is up to RMB 400,000;
Food Subsidy: RMB 300/month during the period of teaching;
Traffic Subsidy: RMB 500 for each volunteer teacher who can teach for a whole semester;
Extra Subsidy: Friends Camp will evaluate the work of each volunteer teacher who can complete a whole semester’s teaching, classify as very excellent/ excellent/ good/ pass/ fail, and provide RMB 0-5,000 for the volunteer teacher according to their achievements.
Help to take an occupation: Friends Camp cooperates with some corporations (including education training institute). Excellent volunteer teachers will be given priority in getting an occupation in these corporations, it helps the volunteer teachers to start their normal life as soon as possible.
After a rapid development in the first several years, Friends Camp is trying to build up our team in a more professional way, going forward to the goal of long-term, stable and team-working.
Friends Camp members consist of “professional social workers + volunteers”, including councils, professional social workers, core volunteers, and volunteers. The setting of the position of professional social workers guarantees our team can work in a continuous and professional way, and to attract more and more volunteers to join us.
Friends Camp has been growing, it includes 3 divisions:
.i/ Administration (includes an independent finance group)
.ii/ Education Supporting Department
.iii/ Fundraising and Sale of Work Department
Friends Camp attaches importance to completing finance rules and the openness of finance:
.i/ Set 3 positions in the finance group: cash keeping/ cashier/ accountant; introduce the rule of joint-examine-and-approve-defray-expenses
.ii/ Open the financial report and bank accounts, supervised by the public
.iii/ Set a ministry of audit, audit the financial report.
.i/Expenditure:
According to the current situation (50 something volunteer teachers a semester, 12 schools, 950 students) the expenses (including subsidy for volunteer teachers/ subsidy for poor students/ the expense to build and restore school/ some other expenses on teaching, such as books, teaching aids, transport costs etc.) are about RMB 500,000 - 700,000 a year; subsidy for the professional social workers and the expense of administration is about RMB 100,000 a year.
.ii/ The source of the fund:
The fund is mainly donated by individuals and the income of sale of work. Individuals usually donate on specific projects. This money is used in an appointed way, the amount of this part is about RMB 300,000 - 500,000 a year. Some others donate on the expense of administration, the amount of this part is about RMB 30,000 a year; The income of sale of work is about RMB 30,000-50,000 a year. Currently the money raised in these ways still can not cover the expenditure; the difference is donated by several core members of Friends Camp.
In these poor and undeveloped places, education is the most effective way to help people there to improve their ability to survive in the society and live a modern life. Currently there’re still more than 30 million people who live in the poor and undeveloped area in China. Education and the capability of the teachers are a big problem there. The main reason is the lack of qualified teachers. Most of the children there are illiterate/half illiterate, they are ignored by our society. In the first 2 years before we started this education supporting project we have tried to build the so-called “hope school”, but finally we found teachers are much more important than school buildings. Furthermore, we found some school buildings deserted cause of lack of teachers. No matter how rotten and old the school building is, students still have the chance to study as long as there are teachers-this is the idea of our project.
Education is a long-term job, the ability of individual is limited.
Only persistence can achieve our goal. The founder of Friends Camp has spent 4 years on preparation before starting the project. After studying many education supporting projects, we found a serious issue:
First of all, most of the volunteer teachers conduct the project individually or intermittently; the volunteer teachers have no income and live under terrible conditions. They have to deal with not only teaching, but the complicated relationship with the locals and local officials, along with raising money, building school, recruiting other volunteers etc. Usually the project can only last two half years, when the volunteer teachers’ passion fades. They have spent their money and feel exhausted. Perhaps the volunteer teachers enjoy this kind of life and gain the respect of others, but in fact it’s not so helpful in improving the life of the local children. On the contrary, if there’s an organization which takes the responsibilities of logistics, raising money, management, recruitment and dealing with the relationship with the locals, it will help the volunteer teachers to focus on teaching, then the project can last for a long time.
Secondly, the abilities of individuals are limited, no matter how hard a volunteer teacher works. His/her effort can only benefit about 30 children at most. But if we build up a team with 10 volunteer teachers, it will benefit 300 children.
Thirdly, education is a long-term job, it’ll effect at a very slow pace.
Friends Camp insists on dealing with the children from the remote mountainous areas and villages in an equal way, take them as our “customers” who are respected and served seriously, but not as persons who need to be given alms. Money is only one of the things they need, a good character and the soul is important. That’s what we’re thinking of: how to help them to get more knowledge in a happy way, so that it won’t hurt their self-respect. We must not try to press our own hobby and our sense of worth on the children.
1/ 12 and 950
Friends Camp is running 12 schools, provides 50 something volunteer teachers each semester, our project benefits more than 900 children within 5 years.
2/ 5 And 222
Influence people’s idea on charity: Within 5 years, Friends Camp recruited 222 volunteer teachers totally, and more than 1,000 supporters and donators. Attract more and more people’s attention on those children who have to interrupt their study for poverty and other reasons.
1/ The goal of Friends Camp
Try our best to help those poor children change their destiny by education.
2/ The strategy of our education supporting project
Facing the fact that there’re more than 30 millions poor population around China who have no chance to be well educated, and there is a lack of about 800,000 teachers in those areas, Friends Camp, such a small NGO, has a huge task. Our strategy is:
On one side, we’ll try to run the 12 schools better and better; on the other side, keep completing our rules and our team, hope the mode of our project can finally be copied by other NGO in other places, and develop more and more schools which need our support. We’ll try to earn more support from the authority and take more advantage of their resources to make our team stronger and more professional.
Our ultimate goal is to attract more and more people, even our whole society to participate in our project, and finally affect the authority to adjust the education policy in these areas, none but this can change the destiny of the children who have no chance to be well educated.
Friends Camp
2011-3-7
