On July 6, 2015, 14 SBC student volunteers arrived at Tang Qiling primary school, located at Tongzhou in the Honghe Hani Autonomous Region, Yunnan Province and began the teaching programme there for a week. The volunteers spent forty hours on the train and two hours on the bus in order to reach the school.
Through the teaching week, the volunteers not only taught Geography, English, Music and other courses, but also conducted an investigation and survey on the high school students’ learning conditions for the purpose of launching a special teaching programme which might help high school students complete their study by gathering support from across society.
The SBC volunteers prepared for the teaching programme for a long time. They were divided into several groups in order to develop a teaching plan based on research on the local pupils’ study level. They rehearsed the teaching plan step by step, trying to find defects and improve the plan. In addition, volunteers conducted charity sales to raise money for pupils in Yunnan.
For the one week of teaching in Yunnan, volunteers not only taught the local pupils knowledge with joy; they also acquired a full picture of local junior and senior school students’ family conditions and offered to help them in their college dreams.
According to the field research and investigation, volunteers learned that many local students had to stop their studies after the national nine years of free compulsory education. These students could not enroll at a senior school, let alone college. The high expense of education was the major barrier to the local students’ college dream. Having gotten along with the local pupils, the entire volunteer agreed to offer their own help to those students who dreamt of college.
