This winter vacation, communities near Yanbian University in Jilin Province became lively. Children in the community gathered in the house and listened attentively to the "little teacher" in class. What is different is that there is no advertisement for remedial classes.

"I like my teacher. When will you come back?" Hearing the words of Chen Sisi, a primary school student, volunteer Wang Xiaoyu couldn't help holding the lovely child in front of her.

The reporter learned that this is the "Love Holiday School" volunteer service activity organized by the National College Students' People Chinese Bilingual Volunteer Service Group, Yanbian University Normal College, in cooperation with the Youth League Yanji Municipal Party Committee. Since January 2018, the volunteer activity has been held for three consecutive times, and the team will be formed into a temporary league branch.

　　 Ethnic minority volunteers serve left behind children of their own ethnic groups

Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture is located at the Sino Korean border in the east of Jilin Province in northeast China. It is the only Korean Autonomous Prefecture and the largest Korean inhabited area in China. Although it has the reputation of "the hometown of education", there is still a gap between national education and national education. Achieving common development has become an unavoidable problem for local development.

The school league organization noted that the emergence of the problem of left behind children is not only related to the children's personal growth, but also related to the sustainable development of border minority areas and social harmony and stability.

How to let ethnic students in colleges and universities participate in social activities? Yanbian University has mobilized its ethnic minority students to participate in volunteer activities. The school group has organized and established a national college students' bilingual volunteer service group (Yanbian University). The school combines national unity with volunteer activities. On the one hand, it trains students, and on the other hand, it allows volunteer activities to be carried out, so that minority children in the community can get dividends.

Before the winter vacation this year, Yanbian University organized several volunteer service teams in all colleges of the university, and selected nearly 100 college student volunteers.

There is a very distinctive team - Yanbian University Normal College team took advantage of its academic advantages, and volunteers cooperated with the Youth League Yanji Municipal Party Committee, Park Street, Beishan Street, and Jiangong Street in January 2018 to organize the "Love Holiday School" volunteer service activities, directly facing left behind children.

After preliminary research, the volunteer team finally selected three service communities: all of them are concentrated in the phenomenon of children's parents going out to work, and the proportion of left behind children is high.

　　 Volunteers face to face with three major problems of left behind children

Volunteers went deep into the community and found that most of the left behind children took care of their daily life for their grandparents. The intergenerational education also caused three major problems for children: poor Mandarin expression, sloppy learning, and psychological problems. What left behind children face is not lack of food and clothing, but the "spiritual poverty" caused by these problems.

To this end, the Normal College of Yanbian University has carefully selected 42 excellent college student volunteers (22 Han and 20 Korean) from the five majors of bilingual normal classes, primary education, preschool education, educational technology and psychology to participate in the volunteer activity of "Love Holiday School" to help families of left behind children solve their children's problems of companionship and education in winter and summer.

Jin Chunhe, leader of the team from the Normal College of Yanbian University, said that the volunteers had set up oral expression courses to cultivate children's interest in Mandarin through oral training, standard Mandarin speaking, reading and writing training, language game design and other forms.

The volunteers combined their own advantages to set up "second classroom" for children: English, music, handicrafts, martial arts, calligraphy, art, fun activities, safety education and other characteristic courses, which fostered and enhanced the learning interest of left behind children and expanded their knowledge reserves.

It is not about how much specific knowledge children should learn, but about how volunteers can help children develop better learning habits and solve the problem of sloppy learning through classes.

Niu Changxin, a volunteer psychology major, found that left behind children have long lacked the attention of their parents, so many children have certain psychological problems.

How to carry out mental health counseling for left behind children? The volunteers fed back the problems they found to Cui Meiyu, the professional director of psychology in the volunteer service team advisory group. Under her guidance, the volunteers carefully prepared a series of psychological group counseling activities about "I have my good habits", "Learning knowledge is really interesting", "I am the master of emotions", and applied them in community classes, and achieved remarkable results.

The volunteers also found that during the Spring Festival holiday, many parents went home for the New Year. The volunteers set up a family education course to teach children how to communicate with their parents, so as to close the family relationship between children and their elders, let children in a harmonious learning environment, inspire the wisdom of left behind children, and improve their communication ability and social adaptability.

　　 To participate in community governance, it is better to "put new wine in old bottles"

Yang Fengzhi, secretary of the General Party Branch of Yanhong Community, has always had a problem about how to make left behind children in the community like learning.

"Due to family economy and other factors, the children's winter and summer vacations are simple and boring, and they basically do not take the initiative to learn. Some children even have no intention to learn. After this voluntary activity was launched, it not only solved the problem of 'difficult care' for children in winter and summer vacations, but also enriched the holiday life of primary school students." Yang Fengzhi said.

Lin Xuemei, secretary of the Youth League Committee of Yanbian University, said frankly that although it is not a new thing to carry out volunteer service activities in the community, this volunteer activity, after careful research in the early stage, directly hit the "pain points" of children left behind in the community, and it is not outdated to carry out volunteer services in the community. Against volunteers, they put forward higher requirements to find new service growth points.

Can volunteers solve practical problems? Recently, volunteers have made new discoveries. Children have been trained in the process of participation, and parents have gradually become involved in education. For example, the "Heart Mailbox" activity reconnects parents' and children's deep thoughts, lets children say something they are embarrassed to say at ordinary times, and also lets parents participate in the education of left behind children.

"In the past, my child didn't communicate with others at school. The child was tired of studying and even didn't do homework because of her poor academic performance at school. The volunteer tried different ways to enlighten her many times, and found that the child's problem was that her Mandarin was not good, so the volunteer guided her to communicate with her classmates correctly in Mandarin." The mother of Yanhong community student Wu Hui (not her real name) said.

After learning in the summer of 2018 and this winter vacation, Wu Hui has gone from being shy and silent to telling stories confidently and generously in the reporting performance. Volunteers developed interesting learning methods such as "competition with teachers" and "small lecturers" for her. She not only liked learning again, but also began to ask for more learning tasks.

Volunteers realized that voluntary activities are subjective altruism and objective self-interest. Volunteer activities also have spillover effects. They have participated in solving the "spiritual poverty" of left behind children and improved the civilization level of the community.

"As pointed out at the Second Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, our main work is at the grass-roots level, and the grass-roots work is just a conscientious work that is difficult to produce results in the short term, but will see the truth in the long run. To be a volunteer, we should start from every bit and stick to it for a long time, truly contribute to social development, drive people around us to attach importance to the educational problems raised by the country and solve them. " Min Meiyu, secretary of the Youth League of Yanbian University Normal College, told reporters.

China Youth Daily · China Youth Online Reporter Zhang Zheng Source: China Youth Daily