Dear Yiyuan Foundation of Care and Education,
It’s my honor to write you the annual report this year . Please allow me to introduce myself at first. My name is Zou Ying, and I’m the new translator of SOS Children’s Village Chengdu China. During the past two years, Mr. Xia Linhua was concurrently re sponsible for the sponsorship job when the former translator was gone and he did a really wonderful job. I’m so grateful for his devotion and from now on, I will take over the job and do my best for it. Though it is late autumn now and the day becomes chilly and windy, we are still having a day or two of su nshine in a week. This is pretty consistent with Germany Chengdu’s reputation famous as “Land of Abundance”, which means a place blessed by the nature with superior conditions such as fine weather, various plants and animals and so on. The season also gives the village a new look. Every early morning, all paths will be covered with yellow fallen leaves, as if a golden blanket is paved on them, giving us a different but beautiful eye feast.
SOS Children’s Village
Under the efforts of the director assistant and other working members, the plan of building an activity center for children has been finally approved. It will be built with the financial support from Louis Vuitton. A week ago, a transparent and well-organi zed bid was held through which we have picked out a most appropriate construction company. The project is planned to finish next year. By then, all the children will have a perfect place to hold the shows and competitions such as singing and dancing that couldn’t have been done frequently because of the lack of thorough equipment and we can also provide a more appropriate room for SOS mother trainings and other conferences. As the reconstruction project of the football playground has finished during the first half year, we intend to strengthen our youth football team. A new coach has been invited and a new team has been formed with the joining with several younger kids. The coach is very responsible and the kids love him very much. They have the practice for three days ev ery week, and every time when they practice, the whole football ground is full of vigor and vitality. This summer holiday, our football team accepted the invitation from Chinese Youth Football Competiti on in Jinniu District. Though compared with other teams, the members in our team were small and not robust, they spared no efforts to compete the game and finally achieved the forth place, a ra ther good performance for an amateur team. This year, there are ten new kids re cruited to our village. As most of them are of minority nationalities such as Tibetan nationality and Yi nationality, and the districts they come from are underdeveloped with poor education conditions, they could hardly u nderstand mandarin or integrated into their new family when they arrived at our village. Accord ingly, our experience rich SOS mothers still have received specific training courses and other forms of ac tivities so as to guide them to adapt to the new environment as soon as possible. By now, six of them have entered primary schools and the rest four in kindergarten.
SOS Training Center
In October, The Second Session Youth Education and Management Conference was held in our village. This meeting was aimed to improve the education and management skills and share the experience among all the SOS Children’s Villages in Ch ina for better carrying out the work later. The highlight of this conference was that five SOS adults who have been independent and lived better-off were invited back to share their feelings and experience on their growing path. Their sharing, on the one hand, is helpful for younger children to find a way to realize themselves better in the future; on the other hand, is a supplementary for our innovating and improving the education and management system. The Training Center is successful. All participating members felt that the resort was fruitful.
Youth Facility
With the leaving of a group of youngsters who hav e graduated this summer, there are only twenty-two young boys living here right now. In order to motivate them to be diligent and hard-working, we have adjusted our strategies so as to be better implem ented. For the eider ones, we give them more freedom and space to tap their potential with our instruction and encourage them to set a good example for the younger ones; for the younger ones, we insist to make study as their priority, so the night lessons have always been kept which is a great help for reviewing the knowledge they leam and finishing the homework that day. Meanwhile, the way of rewarding has been changed. Spiritual encouragement and material encouragement are combi ned together. As long as the youngsters make progress and achieve some performance, it will be giv en, not much but frequently. We can tell that this system has exerted positive influence to some extent, but we still need more efforts to guidethem to grow healthily both physically and psychologically.
Deng
ShuaiYong Deng has become much more outgoing and lovely during the past half year. He used to stay alone but now he’d rather spend time with other kids and take part in group activities. His linguistic ability also beco mes stronger, being able to communicate with others by Chinese not his hometown dialect fluently. As he grows, he becomes more curious about the surrounding world, so he loves to ask questions. Though he can’t always get the answers he wants, his interests in recognizing and exploring the world becomes str onger and stronger. On study, he has been making progress on reading, writing and counting all the time. What’s amazing about him is that he. can recite a whole text just in a very short time, which we believe is due to his strong memory. He is a little bit shorter than other kids at his age. Friends all treat him as little brother. ShuaiYong isn’t happy about this. This brings his dream: to be a superman with supemat ural power! ShuaiYong has a lot of dreams and we hope that he can grow up better and better. last but not least, Merry Christmas and t hanks for your kind support again!
Yours, Miss. Zou Ying Mr. HE Sheng
(Village Director)