Wuhan University Chunhui Club, directed by the Chunhui Action Development Center of the Committee of the Communist Youth League of Guizhou Province, is the first campus Chunhui Club among 985-project universities and the first student non-profit organization for social public welfare in Wuhan University. The name of the club “Chunhui” comes from the Traveler's Song, a homesick poem written by Meng Jiao during the Tang Dynasty. Chunhui Action aims at promoting Chinese culture and repaying society for its kindness.

Liu Fanglin, one of the managers of Chunhui Club, introducing the club

Brand activities: Opening a new world for children

Liu Fanglin, with a red beret, passionately discussed the spirit of their brand activities with us. "For us, the most developed and popular volunteer program is offering educational support to pupils in rural areas in Guizhou during summer vacation." Liu said proudly. "We have reached out to several primary schools with the assistance of the Guizhou government. At first, we prepared diverse courses in order to target the all-around development of students, such as dancing, geography and so on; however, later on we realized that we need to not only broaden their horizons, but also build a solid foundational for students, so we added basic courses to supplement their knowledge." The program lasts for half a month.

Volunteer teachers and children playing games

Winter Movement is another brand activity, aimed at improving the living conditions of needy students from remote areas, for example by providing basic necessities such as scarves and gloves for children to defend against the cold. However, there is always a difference between reality and expectations. “After we went to those rural areas, we surprisingly found out that their material conditions were better than we thought, but the pupils had serious problems with writing, so we shifted our focus to improving the literacy of children instead.” Liu said. In addition to donations and special funds from WHU, Chunhui Club also started to cooperate with some enterprises to solve their expense problem.

Caring Flowers is a program that initially aims at orphans and the elderly. Last year, Chunhui Club went to geracomium (a home for the elderly) regularly to accompany the elderly people, but this program ran into bottlenecks that they had difficulties in innovating the form of activities. In the end, they had to drop it. "After a period of exploration, children became our only target group." The recruitment will begin on campus after they finalize some procedures.

The story behind: Sweat and smile

Wuhan Unversity Chunhui Club is made up of four departments: the Secretary department, the Public relations department, the Publicity department and the Practice department. Each department performs its own functions and works together to carry out the whole program.

"After confirming all the details with the primary schools, the most important part is volunteers training. Volunteers are usually recruited in May, and are supposed to understand and prepare for the challenges there. They also need to have first-aid training. Since children think in a fundamentally different way compared to adults, we must figure out how to communicate with them on a serious problem."

"What's your biggest difficulty?" This seems to be a question for every student organization. As for Chunhui Club, the answer is the harsh living condition we have to face. "I don't think Western public welfare is identical to ours, since our harsh living conditions are unique and local." Liu laughed, "Sometimes the real circumstances are worse, which bother us a lot. Besides, it is difficult to impart knowledge in such a short time, but we'll try our best to describe the outside world  to the children there."

Information about Chunhui Club

"Chunhui action: Great but everyone can do it"

"Chunhui Club still has several challenges." Liu said frankly. "Our actions are not remarkable. There are many similar non-profit organizations. We all have similar activities and this singular mode makes us lack competition, yet we are trying to make breakthroughs all the time." As a newly established association, more publicity is needed to form a brand image. Many systems also need to be improved. "Nowadays, supporting education is sometimes denounced by the public, but we are using our own methods to reduce the educational gap between children. We are going to set a call-back system during winter vacation and try to establish a long-term relationship with primary schools. Because of certain limiting factors, there is still a long way to go."

When talking about the impression of Chunhui Club, Liu chose "warm" to describe this association. "Chunhui gathers many warm people to do warm things together." said Liu, "Before we went there, many students had no idea what university was, they didn't even know what high school was, but as we were leaving, a little boy told me he wanted to be an undergraduate. It impressed me a lot. Maybe half a month is not long enough to change their destinies, but we can let them see the diversity of the world through our efforts."

Volunteer teacher with children

Photo by Cui Wenjing, Chunhui Club.

Edited by Li Minjia

Edited by Zheng Yayun, Edmund Wai Man Lai & Hu Sijia