Project Description

Sino Scholar is a non-profit project supported by a Michigan high school club, Sino Club. We seek to lend a hand to those half-way around the world by supporting children in poverty to obtain opportunities to go to school. In the summer 2007, we gave $25 to two students each, making them able to attend school for the entire year! After seeing the impact of that small sum, we hope to expand our cause and reach even more students this year and allow our fellow sisters and brothers around the school continue to be students.

Project Description

Engineers Without Borders is a non-profit, humanitarian organization committed to partnering with developing communities worldwide to implement sustainable engineering projects. At the University of Tulsa, our chapter has started a project entitled "Sustainable Energy for North East Asia". We are working in China's Jilin province with an American NGO that is trying to teach the local people sustainable, organic agriculture practices.

Jilin is a rural province in northeast China, next to Russia and North Korea. Many of the residents are Korean refugees who are impoverished and oppressed by the Chinese government. The region is sub-Siberian and the climate is harsh and cold. The local people heat their homes by burning unfiltered coal inside, which causes widespread respiratory illness. Electricity from the power grid is expensive and unreliable, when it's available at all.

We hope to address these social, economic, environmental, and health problems in the area by introducing sustainable energy technology. We are developing several sources, including photovoltaic cells, passive solar heating, greenhouses, biogas generation from animal waste, and multiple wind turbine designs. These will be integrated into one system to sustainably power a residence for a shepherd and his animals. By using simple designs and materials that are available in the region, we aim to make our project reproducible by the local people. Through this transfer of technology, we hope to affect more people than just those with whom we work personally.

This project is in its second year. Last summer, a team of four students traveled to the site on an assessment trip. While there, we determined the needs of the community and investigated the materials that were available in the region. We also built a wind turbine that brought new technology to the area - a self-furling tail. This summer, 10 students are planning to travel for the first implementation trip.

Project Description

we decide to contact a school or more in china to become a environmental sister school with my high school-Grimsley High School. which we can send photos or videos from each school to see how each school conserve their own city/school/...

Project Description

During the Summer of 2007, a friend (21 years old) and myself (22 years old) traveled to Tibet together to teach english at an orphanage. during our stay, we saw how the school utilized a very sanitary mini-landfill, and kept their water source and waste systems very well separated. The nearest town from the orphanage (maybe 4 miles) had a much more devastating situation. Trash clogged the waterways, there was no waste removal systems or landfills. The very holy mountain the town was at the base of was also littered with trash, even from the monks! basically what had happened (as it was explained to us a local - facts not verified) was there had been a recent surge of western products, where there had been none before. All trash was once disposable, but now solid waste (what we refer to as trash or garbage) has become
an enormous problem, and is only getting worse. My friend and I have been discussing ways we can return and help the area, because it is suffering in many ways. We decided that the management of solid waste within the community would be the least political (aka most feasible), and most helpful thing we could provide to the environmentally fragile town. Also, as Tibet is considered the roof of the world, the water runs through these polluted areas down to other cities, thus they receive contaminated water as well.

The project would be initially implemented in the town mentioned above for two main reasons: 1 - We have connections in the area; we have knowledge of the surroundings, and we have witnessed the problem first hand as well as a model for a functional solution (the orphanage 4 miles down the road). 2 - travelers stay for free at the orphanage we worked at, so long as they aide the orphanage in some way. Those involved in the project would have negligible living costs (free food and shelter) if only 40 minutes a day was devoted to teaching the orphans english (or other subjects).

This undertaking will be essentially be a pilot project, and if successful, we will attempt to aid other struggling towns throughout Tibet.

This project is still in a brainstorming phase - ANY help, suggestions, criticisms, similar projects, etc. are very much appreciated. Fund raising has not started yet, but it will be essential to our project. Help or support offered in anyway are welcome

You say "Free Tibet?"
We say that it's a process, the first step being stability.

Project Description

1. Local Needs:

Suzhou, a thousand-year-old Chinese city of tranquility and beauty, is experiencing some of the world's most rapid economic and social transformations. While modern skyscrapers increasingly dominate the skyline, new problems arise at the same pace.

Firstly, there is a widening socioeconomic gap between the wealthy and the poor. Albeit a symptom widely seen across China, the disparity reaches its worst in the fast-developing, coastal city of Suzhou. Migrant workers' children do not have access to education, rising real estate prices keep the majority of the city's residents from owning new homes, foreign-owned factories pay little of their enormous profits to the Chinese workers themselves, and a government employee's annual salary is 4 to 5 times as high as that of an enterprise employee.

Secondly, environmental pollution has become a problem of tremendous concern. Numerous tragic cases involve extreme sicknesses and deaths of factory workers; children and the elderly are especially prone to the consequences of factory's emissions and drainage. The high climbs in GDP are, sadly, at the cost of people's health and destruction of the environment.

Last but not least, high school students in Suzhou, long used to learning only textbook materials, have little experiences in leadership and community service. While problems of different kinds teem in the streets all around them, students often fail to take an active role. As the hope and future of society, high-school students have a golden opportunity to take the initiative in society, raise public awareness, and combat those problems.

Thus this service program will target the three aforementioned issues (migrant workers, environment, and education) facing a developing Suzhou.

2. Objectives:

1. Mobilize Chinese high school students to take a greater role in societal issues.
2. Give these students a Western perspective of education that focuses on leadership and skills-application rather than "dead" book materials.
3. Facilitate in the development of a Chinese-student-run, long-term project aimed at solving one of the major socioeconomic problems
4. Set the stage for students to become active leaders in their community

3. Project Components:

* Mentor-Mentee Program: each member of the MIT-CDI team will be a mentor in charge of two or three mentees; he or she will observe and facilitate the daily development of his or her mentees
* Several Chinese university students will be on the CDI programming team to provide a Chinese perspective and ensure a diverse meeting of ideas
* Leadership Curriculum: includes topics such as interpersonal communications, persuasion, public speaking; emphasizes on the different forms of leadership and will be conveyed through lessons, games, and other activities novel to Chinese students
* Thematic Seminars: Mentors and invited speakers will present on the topics of U.S. education, environmental protection, real estate, income distribution, and other relevant topics; seminars will encourage student participation and interaction; there will be daily activities related to the theme of the seminar
* Final Project: in the second week, students will be divided into groups and work on a solution to a particular social problem; teams will go to the community for real-world implementation and create a final plan
* Final Presentation: Each team will present their plan to project participants and teachers; different awards will be given out after evaluation
* Closing Ceremony: CDI leaders and student representatives will present the results of the 10-day long project to Mayor of Suzhou, officials of the Ministry of Education, school principal, and other officials; ceremony will be televised
* Sustainable Project: Selected at the end of the program, this sustainable project will be implemented by a team composed of students of different committees. The team will run, sustain, and maintain the project after the end of the program; all the CDI team members will be advisers to the project even after completion of the summer session, and CDI contacts in China will serve as local mentors
* Media Coverage: there will be media coverage throughout the program; local TV station will deploy cameramen to record the learning process of students and journalists to make frequent reports
* Online Applications: select well-rounded high school students passionate in solving social problems to participate in our program

4. Impacts:

* Immediate Impacts: Student participants
o Develop awareness for social problems in their immediate surroundings
o Gain knowledge in how socioeconomic, environmental, and educational issues affect their communities
o Create a social service project

* Sustainable Impacts:
o Student participants implement their social service project while receiving continued mentoring
o Through media coverage increase general public awareness of social problems and program participants' efforts at alleviating those problems
o Community mobilization in similar efforts

5. Tentative Schedule:

Day

Activities

Day 1

-Morning:

* Mentor/Mentee meeting and icebreaker activities
* Program Orientation

-Afternoon:

* Thematic Seminar(TS) I: High Tech
* Field trip to Suzhou New & High-Tech Industrial Zone

Day 2

-Morning: Leadership Curriculum(LC) I—Interpersonal Relationship

-Afternoon:

* TSII: Environment/Energy
* Field trip to Sams Co. Ltd. (manufactures water-quality control devices)
* Field trip to Changrong Environmental Protection Tech. Co. Ltd.

Day 3

-Morning: LC II—Inter-organizational Relationship

-Afternoon:

* TS III—Export Economy & Real Estate
* Field trip to China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP)

Day 4

-Morning: LC III—Community Relationship

-Afternoon:

* TS IV—US Education and Extracurricular Activities (student groups, activism, etc.)
* Field trip to one of the Schools for Migrant Worker’s Children

Day 5

-Morning: LC IV—Public Speaking & Persuasion

-Afternoon:

* TS V—US Education & college education
* Topic of the Final Project announced; students divided into teams; brainstorming starts

Day 6 (Saturday)

Fun Day to National Reserve

Day 7 (Sunday)

Free day

Day 8

-Morning:

* Teams propose solutions
* Teams devise ways of testing the solutions

-Afternoon: Go into the community and test proposed solutions through surveys, interviews, actual implementation, etc.

Day 9

-Morning: Further implement and experiment with proposed solutions

-Afternoon:

* Finalize plan
* Prepare for final presentation

Day 10

-Morning:

* Final Presentation by all the teams
* Evaluation and awards

-Afternoon:

* Closing Ceremony: includes city mayor, minister of education, school principal, other officials, and wide media coverage
* Farewell activities

6. Budget:

We will recruit 15 students with diverse backgrounds from the MIT student community for the MIT-China Service Leadership Program. The program will require approximately $25,950 in funding for all 15 participants. The breakdown of the funding needs are outlined below.

Airfare: $22,500
Local travel: $150
Food: $750
Accomodation: $3,000
Classroom materials: $450

Grand Total: $26,850

7. About MIT-CDI:

The MIT-China Service Leadership Program is a program created and organized by the MIT-China Development Initiative (MIT-CDI).

MIT-CDI is a group founded in October 2007 with the purpose of creating more opportunities for MIT students to participate in programs related to relevant issues in China's development and falls under the current MIT-China program. The organizing group consists of eleven MIT students from diverse backgrounds and departments and adviser Sean Gilbert.

Members:

* Lihua Bai, Class of 2009, Sloan School of Management
* Jack Chen, Class of 2011, Department of Economics, Department of Mathematics
* Angie Chiang, Class of 2009, Department of Biology, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
* Naisi Gao, Class of 2011
* Yuqiao Huang, Class of 2009, Department of Economics
* Boling Jiang, Class of 2011
* Wesley Koo, Class of 2009, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Sloan School of Management
* Jing Li, Class of 2011
* Sean Liu, Class of 2010, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
* Di Ye, Class of 2010, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
* Wendi Zhang, Class of 2009, Sloan School of Management, Department of Mathematics

Under MIT-China Service Leadership Program organizing committee, there will be four committees - Program Structuring, External Relations, Finance, and Marketing. Every member involved with the program will contribute to each of the four committees, but there will be core members on each committee who will work extensively on the committee.

Responsibilities of each committee are outlined as follows:

Program Structuring
The Program Structuring committee will be the largest committee. Tasks for the Programming Structure Committee include:

* Create curriculum and schedule for the program
* Brainstorm innovate ideas for implementation in the program
* Organize training for participating members

External Relations
The External Relations committee will manage relationships with anyone not directly involved in the program. Tasks for the External Relations Committee include:

* Initiate contact with contacts directly involved with the program (professors, administrators, etc.)
* Maintain relationship with contacts directly involved with the program

Finance
The Finance committee will work closely with the External Relations committee in order to find funding for the program. Tasks for the Finance committee include:

* Contact potential donors for program funding
* Manage budget for organization
* Take care of logistics for living expense arrangements in China

Marketing
The Marketing committee will promote the program to both the MIT community and the targeted high school in China. Tasks for the Marketing committee include:

* Publicize event for both MIT and target Chinese school
* Recruit non-organizing participants for program mentors
* Build website for program

Project Description

The Rural China Education Foundation (RCEF) strives to empower rural teachers to develop community-based education that prepares children for life and for contribution to community development. We envision renewing the meaning, contents and methods of rural education so that instead of serving as an escape route away from rural problems, they work for the betterment of rural society and create citizens with a sense of agency and social responsibility for improving rural China from within. We test out our philosophy in summer camps for rural children run by short-term volunteers and now, we will expand to send a corps of long-term Teaching Fellows (TFs) to support rural educators and community members in developing quality, community-relevant education throughout the year. Well-documented action research from these experimental sites supplemented by our short-term volunteer programs will form the foundation for a proven and sustainable set of curriculum ideas and a cohort of rural practitioners who are implementing these methods across rural China. Their results can then be disseminated to reach more children and turn education into a true force in rural development.

RCEF philosophy must be tested by long-term action research on the ground to figure out how it can actually be implemented. Educators and villagers must be empowered to re-think the needs of their students and the community and to participate in adapting education to serve those needs. Students must personally apply learning to achieve positive change before they can think of themselves as long-term change agents in life and community development. Individuals who share our vision and want to work in rural education need to be connected with each other and given training, mentorship, suitable experimental sites, and funding. Thus, we will send a cohort of carefully selected TFs to live and develop curriculum full-time with rural people in their communities. They will get in-service support from RCEF staff and reinforcements from college student volunteering clubs and international volunteers who will go to the sites on school breaks to run enriching camps for the children. These allies will also raise public awareness and draw new ideas and resources to the cause. We will disseminate our experiences as catalysts for community-centered curriculum reform throughout rural China.

Project Description

A Taste of China will be held at the Oklahoma History Museum in cooperation with the Asia Festival on May 19th. It will play host to a variety of projects dealing with China. Casady School students are organizing the event. Sophomore John Vincent is a transfer student from China. He will be teaching Chinese calligraphy using t-shirts. He will need a supply of brushes, ink, and t-shirts. Freshman Sarah Cox went on an Orchestra trip to China over spring break. She will be hosting a DVD she made about her trip to China and showing souvenirs from her trip. Middle schooler Christopher Moore is the son of the director of the orchestra. He made a PowerPoint presentation over China to show at school; he will be showing that presentation at the Festival. Senior Jun Woo Park is a transfer student from Korea; he also went to China. He will be doing Martial Arts demonstrations with me. My name is Justin Ou, and I am a senior who is of Chinese and Cambodian descent. I am putting the whole project together. Our school will be providing some resources for the presentations, but we need some monetary help for the cost of supplies that include brushes, ink, t-shirts, mats, teacups, and other souvenirs to give away.