Staff Spotlight: Annie Zhang

I am currently working as the China Program Coordinator, mainly responsible for the coordination with different local NGOs.

I haven’t done any volunteering work abroad so far. If given a chance, I would like to volunteer to help the disadvantaged people struggling in poverty in India. Through the volunteer service, I would have a better chance to experience the real living circumstance and know more about the people there.

We are working with more and more local NGOs in Yunnan, including autistic children care centers and several special schools for disabled and disadvantaged children. We have an obvious increase in the number of students enrolling in our programs every year. Now, we are cooperating with Minds Abroad and incorporating their Study + Travel programs into our volunteer programs in order to help the students to gain basic language skills and enjoy the places of interests while doing the volunteering.

The reason I consider language learning and cultural immersion of great importance is that language is the best tool one can use to really learn about a new culture. As a very useful way to gain good knowledge of a new language, cultural immersion forces you to use the new language and enables you to really get involved in the new culture.

There are so many unforgettable and shining memories. I led two volunteers to an autistic children helping center. The children were very happy to see foreign volunteers again; even the child called Doudou showed us a lovely smile. Doudou was one of the children who is in a relatively worse situation. He never paid attention or tried to say a word to anyone except for his parents and his caring teacher. But on that day, Doudou presented a very big happy smile to our volunteers. The smile was so pure and clean that we couldn’t ever forget. We learnd from the teachers that more and more children became more open and brave to stay with strangers. With the help of their teachers and our volunteers, some children recovered good enough to enter a regular public school. Though I am not the one offering them help directly, I still feel happy and satisfied for what I have done. I can say, I am very proud every time I send a volunteer to site and help the people through the volunteer.