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Filling the need to help others

By Tan Yingzi (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-12-05 08:11

In 1993, the CCYL extended a nationwide campaign to promote volunteerism and built up the necessary networks to support volunteer work on a large scale.

There are currently about 75 million CCYL members aged from 14 to 28, half of them students and under nearly 3 million grassroots units, CCYL figures have showed.

More than 2,000 university associations and 190,000 grassroots units are now covered under the Chinese Young Volunteers Association.

The country's opening-up policy and rapid economic development is also said to have helped an increasing number of non-government organizations (NGOs), community groups and members of the private sector working with the government agencies on volunteer projects.

"We must strengthen the cooperation and exchange with these organizations," CCYL volunteer director Xu Xiao said.

"These international groups have advanced management experience and we should learn from them."

Saving the Children, an international NGO helping needy children, has been working in China since the late 1980s, spreading the word of volunteerism through its projects.

"At first, few people had an idea of volunteer work and did not understand what we were doing," said Jiang Min, a project manager at the NGO's Kunming branch.

Jiang and her colleagues organized lectures, trainings and activities to explain their programs. Now the branch has up to 60 volunteers, including college students, retirees and professionals.

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