Recently, stories of youth leaders during the combat of COVID-19 have been released by the Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, UN. Wang Xiukun, a member of the Youth Volunteers Association of WHU and the Wuhan Youth Volunteers Association, is on the list.
Since the outbreak of the epidemic, health workers in Wuhan have been struggling on the frontline, trying to weather the storm that is COVID 19. While doctors and nurses were at their posts, one of their primary concerns was the education and mental health of their children. Without their parents around, how could those children get supported educationally and emotionally? To deal with this dilemma, the Youth Volunteers Association of WHU took up the task of providing private online tutoring for the children of frontline medical staff in Wuhan.
Wang Xiukun, a postgraduate student from the School of Foreign Languages and Literature, is one of the young leaders of the association. Since February 9, she has been spending her days and nights recruiting student volunteers, matching them to the families of healthcare workers, and developing new and innovative ways of interacting with the children under their responsibility. She also teaches English twice a week as part of the online service. Currently, she has matched 1,378 volunteers to the families of 641 medical workers in Hubei Province.
Wang Xiukun giving online tutoring to children
During the lockdown of Wuhan, the economy was brought to a halt due to closed businesses. The operation of supermarkets in Wuhan was also impacted by a loss of staff, who refused to work out of fear of the virus and its rapid spread. As a result, the remaining workers were faced with massive workloads as well as a high risk of infection. To help keep supermarkets operating at the required level during the crisis, the Wuhan Youth Volunteer Association recruited more than 3,000 volunteers, most of whom were born during and after the 1990s, to serve the supermarkets in the city by helping to pack, sort and contribute whatever was needed. Zheng Xinyi, an undergraduate student from the School of Marxism, was one of them. She assisted the staff in their work, and said in an interview: “We will be wherever we are needed.”
Zheng Xinyin being interviewed by CCTV
It is because of the efforts of people of all walks of life in the battle against the disease that we can dispel the dark cloud and finally see the sun. As was said by Jayathma Wickramanayake, the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, “Selflessly foregoing their time, energy and safety to help those in need, today’s youth are using their technical savvy to combat the effects of COVID-19. We will get through this crisis. And when we do, I am sure that history will show the world’s young people helped to build a bridge from fear to hope and from confusion to understanding.”
Edited by Yu Jianan
Edited by Geng Jinwei, Sylvia and Hu Sijia
