Ann is one of my best friends in Lingnan University. She always looks for volunteer opportunities and she has many voluntary experiences. Here, I am going to share one of her voluntary experiences in the USA last summer.
There are mainly two reasons pushes Ann to participate the voluntary camp in America last year. The first one is that the voluntary agency is reliable. She has participated program organized by the Voltra agency in Hong Kong before and she found she can communicate with people who hold totally different life experiences form her. The culture shock she have really gave her unforgettable memories. The second reason is that compared to the USA, African countries are much safer.
During the summer camp last year, Ann is responsible for teaching high-risk American students Chinese history. These students are kind of special, they failed the history subject in school, therefor, they attend this summer camp to catch up. They have history classes in the morning and tutorials at the afternoon. For the lunch, there will be traditional food prepared by volunteers from different countries.
After the summer camp last year, Ann reflects that the reason that these students often due to objective reasons such as parents’ devoice and cancer. When we are talking about education equality, Ann mentioned that she thought American students are lucky, as even though they have failed the history, they have opportunities to participate this summer camp to catch up with others. Charities in the USA will raise money for them. However, for students from Africa countries, children will lose many chances to study because of economic lag and incomplete social welfare. Even for volunteers, some of them may be worried about their self-securities in Africa countries. Therefore, Ann holds the view that the education inequality is mainly due to the economic conditions and social welfares.
Written by Cai Liang