Millennium Goal Service Projects

All of my students need to complete a service project this spring. Here are some of the abstracts of their projects.

Breakfast Project for Very Poor Children
Millennium Goal: End Poverty and Hunger
Susanna Ma, Valerie Wang

Contributing to an NGO with similar goals to end hunger and poverty(E: Feed the Children) is the focus of our project. Poverty and hunger are a basic and critical problem in China and children, who are the future of the country, are the most at-risk segment of the population.
Breakfast provides most of the nutrition for the day. Hungry children in elementary schools in the poorest area of Henan Province (research will show us where the highest poverty level is in Henan Province) will be beneficiaries of our project.

We will raise money during an evening performance or reception during the Women's Symposium in May. The minimum donation we will ask ￥2.00 per audience member and try to raise a total of 2000 yuan.   After that we will contribute the money to an NGO (ask help from another group to identify the proper NGO) who shares our goals.

This is not a one time effort. We will repeat this effort in September when the start of the school year comes.

In addition, we will ask the NGO to introduce some hi-technology methods to clean the water in the target communities. The NGO can also begin an education   campaign to teach community leaders how to improve the methods to cook in healthier, more efficient and less polluting ways.

Clean Water for Everyone
Millennium Goal(s):  Environmental Sustainability
Wendy, Joy,  Silvina, Mel

Regretfully over half of people still lack a toilet and other forms of health facilities.  And the rural villagers are at the greatest disadvantage to get clean drinking water. Safe and clean drinking water and sanitation are human rights and essential for a full enjoyment of life. This project aims at improving the provision of water and sanitation facilities in poor rural areas in Zhengzhou, China. We plan to implement our clean water campaign during the month of May, 2012.

To start, we will divide our team members into three committees:

(1) Marketing- to find sponsors, NGO’s, private sector, and other organizations that can raise money for this important cause.
(2) Public relations- to give speeches to ensure that the issue of sanitation gets the attention it deserves and to solicit the help of other college students.
(3) Organization- to solicit   government agencies  to construct infrastructure, such as water filter facilities, waste water recycling, collection of municipal solid waste, more toilets and so on.
Additionally, we will develop an on-line platform to share data on water and sanitation provision and consumer satisfaction in Zhengzhou.

To meet this huge goal, we will solicit the help of many people (students, administration, citizens, government leaders, etc.). We will not be satisfied until more than half of people in rural villages have clean water and functioning sanitation systems.  Yes We Can!!! Yes We Will!!!

Connecting with Middle School Dropouts
Millennium Goal(s):  Universal Education
Emily (Chairperson), Fullmoon，Vita，Sunny，Joanna，Ryen (Team players）

Basic education for all children is very important. If children are not educated, the entire country suffers.  We need to educate children to make our country stronger and stronger. If we do not educate children, they will lose opportunities to grow and enrich their lives. If the children are not educated, they cannot find meaningful work and have little to no quality of life.  Education can change one’s entire life.  We believe that everyone should have the chance to go to school.

For our project we want to find a middle school in a poor area.  Through the help of the school administration, we will find students who have dropped out as early as middle school age. We will persuade these children to go back to school.  We will let their parents know the importance of an education. Then we will collect information to determine why they dropped out of school. Maybe we can offer some solutions to change their decisions. And after we have established a relationship with these students, we will leave our academy’s public connections such as our Email address our office address and our telephone number so we can give them support when they meet difficulties. We will also give them advice about their lessons during their study.

We want to take the first step to make sure every child, in every village, has the same chance as the children who live in rich areas to receive education. We will not be satisfied until parents realize and support the significance of education. We believe that we can reconnect children to schools so that they receive education. We do our utmost to achieve this important goal.
 
ENCOURAGE EVERYONE DO THE BASIC ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
Millennium Goal(s): Environmental Sustainability
Leader: Sarah, Note taker: Kelly Zhang, Kelly Zhu, Members: Julia, Honey

We think that environmental sustainability should be everyone’s responsibility. Then, and only then, it will make an obvious difference, so we will appeal to all college students, faculty and staff to protect the environment in SIAS campus.

First, they should notice how serious the problem of pollution is on our campus. So we will take photos about the litter pollution, plastics pollution, and the plants that have been broken by us, the waste of papers, electricity and water. Then we will make a speech on our campus during the Women’s Forum (May 19 and 20, 2012). We will also create a PowerPoint presentation, using the photos.  We will also write articles about the reality of our environment.  Words are powerful. These articles will be distributed to our school newspaper, the radio station and other campus media. Through this action, it is our hope, people will pay more attention to the environmental protection, and we can lead them to do small things, like save water, put litter in its proper place .Second, we will solicit help from other school organization, then we can organize our schoolmates better to protect our environment. There is an environmental protection academy on our campus. We will contact with them and get help from them. In addition to giving us advice, we plan to ask them give us 50 rubbish cans which we will distribute all over the campus. We will consider this project a success if we can give all students a deeper impression of the urgent need to protect the environmental. And then protecting environment becomes their habits.

We think that the first step can help the students to be determined to protect the environment; the second step can help us solve the difficulties we may meet together. Both two steps will help students to do basic environmental protection, and then we will get a better environment to live in.

Future  Stars
Millennium Goal(s): Ending Poverty and Hunger
Chairperson: Amber, Team: Jude, Alice gao, Alice Li. Gabriela, Candice, Jodie, Ada

We support the UN Millennium goal of eradicating poverty and hunger. This goal is meaningful for us because many of us come from a village and have lived a poor life.  In the past, we were eager to improve the conditions of our own family.  But as time goes on, we discovered that there are so many people like us leading such a life. But we are blessed because we are receiving a university education. So we would like to help others receive a better education. Our group will go to a rural middle school in Xin Zheng as volunteers. We plan to tutor students and to provide them with some information on how to improve them. We will emphasis that the best way to decrease poverty is through education.  Eventually, this will lead them to a bright future.

We realize that we will need more than just our group to implement this goal.  So we plan to influence other students. We hope to get ten more students to join our efforts. The more students who join us, the more we will achieve.

And finally, we will collect clothing, school supplies and books which we will donate to these children.  We hope to give every child a book.

We believe we can achieve our goal!  Yes we can, yes we will!

Gender Equity on SIAS Campus

Women in all countries of the world are discriminated solely because of their gender. In China, it is particularly difficult for women because many parents want to have a boy instead of a girl. As an adult, women often receive unfair treatment when they are working, their wages are often less, and hiring opportunities are not the same.

Because gender inequalities are so rampant around the world, we wonder if Sias University is any different from the rest of the world.  We would like to investigate how fair gender equality on our campus is.  To start, we will interview the SIAS human resource office about SIAS faculty members.  Included in our investigation will be questions about the gender ratio of professors, administrators and staff. We will review any policies on gender equity in hiring practices, pay and treatment. We will investigate any differences in pay.

Once we have all of this information, we will find one issue that could make an immediate, positive impact for women.  We will visit with Mr. Chen, president of the university, to ask his support to make this change.  It would be our goal to announce this change at the Women Symposium on May 19 and 20, 2012.

Additionally, we recognize that we have to change the attitudes of the students. So we will also research facts about gender unequal around the world such women's social status, unfair treatment, family, Violence, sexual abuse, opportunity to be educated.

We will make a video, letting others know gender equality is necessary. We will show the video in Kennedy Hall.  Additionally, we will seek some women who live in a society with a more gender equality and we will ask them to make a speech about their lives and experiences after the video.
Our goal: to raise everyone’s awareness that women must have the same opportunities as men.

Illegal Marriages
Millennium Goals: Gender Equality; Eradicating Poverty
Team: Selia

I grew up in a rural village where people are kind, hospitable and honest. I have been very lucky to become the only girl in my big family to enter college, which makes my family suffer much financial burden. But my family and I believe it is worth it. Education is the only way to get out of poverty. But for others who didn’t go to college, they live a different life. My sister is working at a factory far away from her children. My brother quit school at the fourth grade and got married at 19. Now he has to work at a construction site to support his family. This hard job makes him look older than his age. My best friend got married at the age of 18 and his wife was 17. Life should have been going well for her, but it is always full of surprises. My friend started dating another woman and wanted to divorce his 19-year-old wife.  So what would you do if you were the wife ？Seek legal help to protect yourself? No, there isn’t any legal protection for her. The legal marriage age in China for men is 22, for women are 20. My friend, my sister and my brother were all married without a marriage certificate. Their marriages are not protected by law. Because of this law, my friend, who is now 20 can leave his wife and marry another woman? But what about this kind woman and her young son? We could say it is unfair for the woman, but it is just what it is. And she is just one of many women in the village who has suffered this kind of heartbreaking pain. All my life, I have witnessed the pain that women who are my age have suffered. It is time to make a difference.

As global leaders, what could we do to help the women who are often the victims of illegal marriages? Part of the reason that young people in the village get married so early is that they quit school very early. They have nothing to do but get married. It has become a custom in the village, Parents and their daughters need to be educated on how harmful it would to get married too early. As educated people, we need to help people understand the importance of education. I can and I will, but I need your help!

One World, One Dream
Millennium Goal(s): Global Partnership
Cindy, June, Selina, Jurny

Our project will focus on developing global partnerships to address the needs of the global economy, technology, medicine, and environment in developing countries.  We plan to build a website named One World, One Dream. We will research information about the poor countries all over the world and post this information on our site.  Additionally we will make a global appeal to people, around the world, to join our site. We will send our website address and goals to famous people’s blog in hopes that they will tell others about our site. We will let them know about our site. We will invite them to be our spokesman.  We hope over 100 people will visit our website each month.   We will also ask our foreign teachers to help us contact to communities about the globe.  We will also make connections to the others on UCP-Sarnet. We will send letters to the embassies around the world. It is our hope that they can give us some help to find solutions to the Millennium goals.  Finally we will organize a club with Chinese students and the foreign students around the world. We are the future of the world.  If we all could realize the importance of global partnerships; we could change the world.

Sunshine  Angels
Millennium Goal(s):  Child health
Leader: Gloria, Note taker: Carina, Members: Melissa, Helen, Jane

We all love children, they are lovely and innocent. We like to see happy and pretty expressions on their faces. Everyone has a desire to protect beautiful things; children are delicate and beautiful, they deserve a healthy and wonderful life, so we need to do something for them.

There are children in special schools in our local area. Even though they are being educated, because of their disability, they live in isolation. However, they are just like us. They need to love and be loved. For our project, we will develop a series of preplanned activities. Specially, we will conduct activities after school that will provide these special students with comradeship, fellowship, friendship and personal success. First, we will call the headmaster to determine a date, the number of students, duration of time, and any expectation that the school administration will have for us. Once we have all the information, we will plan activities within the ability of the students. In addressing children’s health, we will pay attention on the students’ emotional health.  When we finish it, we hope to leave these lovely students stronger, more confidence, and with a better sense of belonging to society.

This project will be implemented at weekends during May 2012.

Sunshine Travel
Millennium Goal(s): Universal Education
Cherr , Rachel , Karin

Children are the future of our country. So they must to be educated. However, in many villages, there are still some parents who do not realize the importance of education. There are so many village children who stay at home with their grandparents while their parents go out to earn money. And the children do not seem eager for knowledge. And it seems as if too many parents do not care about their children’s education.  Too many parents just don’t know the power of knowledge.  They can’t imagine what life would be like if their children just received an education. This is unfair to the children.  So we have to do our part to help parents and children realize the importance of education.

For this phenomenon, we have decided to go to the village near our campus during the summer holiday. We will go to the village children’s home, talk with the children and their parents. First, we should ask their opinions about education, then, we will tell their parents about the educational opportunities we gain from going to college. For the children, we will tell them the interesting things about college life and how colorful their life will be after they possess knowledge. We think that through our action, children will become eager for knowledge and their parents will also favor their children to learn more knowledge. Through our efforts, we plan to help parents enroll their children in to schools for the 2012-2013 school year. We deeply believe that, through all of us work hard; the world will become more beautiful for these children and their children as well.

The Healthy Baby Project: Healthy Mothers have Healthy Babies
Millennium Goal: Improving maternal health; Improving childhood health
Leader:  Teresa, Team members: Mathilda, Teresa, Amelia

Our project will serve the maternal health needs of women in a local rural village.  We plan to implement our project at the end of May 2012. Too many women become pregnant and do not receive adequate health care.  The consequence can be devastating to the mother and can cause long term health problems for the children.

To start our project, we will first visit a village and survey the women to determine their needs and options.  Once we have that information, we will compile it into a readable summary and sent this summary to a variety of medical health providers.  We will interview several health providers to give us some suggestions on how the women’s needs can be met.  We will then return to the village and provide these women with some potential solutions to their maternal health concerns.
Our actions will include:  We will develop a survey.  We will conduct a survey.  We will write a summary of our findings.  We will send our findings to professional in the medical field.  We will interview and review our findings with a doctor and a mid-wife.  We will return to the village and share our new information with the village women.

Our goal is help more women deliver health, beautiful babies.

Water the flowers of the Futur.
Millennium Goal(s) : Universal  Education
LEADER:  Nadia, Members:  Linda Zhang, Vivi Liu, Melisa Wang , Jenny , Angella, Linda Wang.

Education is always developing.  Education is wealth.  Education creates civilizations and culture.  For these reasons, everyone should receive an education.  Everyone has rights to learn.  But our rural areas do not always offer the appropriate conditions to learn. As college students, we should help others who don’t have the proper opportunity to study.

Our group supports universal education. To address this goal, we will make a connection with an elementary school in a rural area. We will tutor these children as a means to support what they are now learning in their schools.  We plan to tutor them in English, Math and Chinese.  We will also design activities to draw their interests to learn.  And we will provide some reading materials to their school’s library.

To support and continue our efforts, we want to motivate others to take action. We want other college students to realize that not everyone has the same opportunity to go to school.  We plan to attract college students to be volunteers to teach children.  We also want to solicit donations to buy resources for the school. Additionally, we will write letters to the local government, asking them to take measures or allocate funds to help these children. Finally, we will arrange a visit to SIAS University for these children with the hopes of stimulating their interest in learning and knowledge in their inner heart.