Summer Camp, Remote Teaching, Library Corners

Due to Covid-19 pandemic, we decided to cancel our 2020 SESP summer camp.

Instead, we spent our project fund on personal protective equipment purchases. We’ve donated 10000 disposable face masks to the Chinese school we usually teach at in summer, and 1000 N95 respirators to the local hospitals in Greater Seattle area.

SESP-Education Support Program

Who We Are

SESP is an Educational Support Program in Little Masters Club.

Our goal is to provide an enriching educational experience to the students where our programs are located, while simultaneously providing a transformative opportunity for volunteers to learn and grow as a team member as well as lead and inspire as a teacher. We have expanded from Shanxi to two other locations: Shanxi Qincheng and Shanghai.

Leadership Team:

Advisory Board: Felicia Yan, David Wang, Haiqin Wang

Team Lead:

  • Sichuan: Kevin Yan, Sophia Fang
  • Shanghai: Helena Feng, Faye Zhang
  • Shanxi: Elizabeth Yan, Jessie Xu
Email: [email protected]

FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions

Application Forms: (Application for 2019 is closed now.) 

2019 Summer Camp Highlight

2019 SESP archives

Objectives

The Shanxi Education Support project is designed for American kids to provide educational support to the underprivileged children in rural regions of Shanxi, China. In the process, these young volunteer teachers get the opportunity to live with local families in the village, experience folklife, learn local culture and heritage, and build teaching and leadership skills. It is truly an eye-opening and memorable experience.

Mission Statement

We organize engaging activities for our volunteers to explore the regional culture, experience the rural living environment and interact with local students in Shanxi, an under-developed province in northwest China. We also raise funds and books to donate in order to help expand the school library to provide a better reading experience for young readers. Through these various activities, we hope to develop strong leadership and communication skills, but more importantly to demonstrate to our volunteers’ just how fortunate they are to have the convenient lifestyle of a modern city and teach them to appreciate what they have.

Project Outline

The project focuses on three types of activities: summer camp, remote teaching, library corners

Summer Camp

We organize annual visit to local villages and provide educational support to the students there. During each summer break, we send a group of Little Masters to Dabaishui, a small village in Shanxi Province of China to teach the local students English, sports, dance, and various games. The activities included are:

  1. Teaching in local schools, playing, learning, interacting with local students, exchanging effective learning methods, sharing resources that benefit the local students’ education both academically and financially.
  2. Living with local families, visiting culture heritages such as ancient Buddhism temples and family ancestral hall, handcrafting local folk art;
  3. Hiking in local mountains, fishing in ponds, u-picking in orchard farms and other fun activities.

Note that there might be changes as necessary to ensure the fun and learning experiences of the participants as well as the contributed services to the local communities. We also keep improving the activities every year based on feedback from the participants.

We’ve been organizing the Shanxi Education Support Summer Camp and traveling to the same village since 2015. Many of the team members are returning teachers and they involved deeper and deeper in the project. Some became project leaders, actively plan the curriculum and activities, recruit younger and newer team members, and lead the whole team to have a fun and productive experience.

Remote Teaching

In 2016, we started remote teaching through real-time video connected to the local classrooms. We read English stories, introduce American cultures, help the students speak and read English as native speakers.

Most of our teachers are the high schoolers who visited the school during previous education support summer camps. Many of them are returning to the village again this year.

Library Corners

We collect used books for young readers at school age, especially those at elementary and middle schools.  There are few English books in the local school’s library. Even its Chinese story books collection needs to be extended with quality books that really draw kids’ interest in reading.

We have six book collection stations in Seattle area: Kent, Sammamish, Redmond, Kenmore, Bellevue, Kirkland.  There are a group of high school students helping collect the used books and record the book catalog.  The collected books are then brought to a village in Shanxi and donated to the school’s library in the village.

We also raise funds for purchasing new juvenile books and donate them to the local schools. Subscriptions to online access to ebooks and teaching materials like Raz-Kids are also donated to the local schools for their class use.

In 2016, we have donated 500+ used juvenile English books and 2500+ new juvenile Chinese books to Facheng School in Dabaishui. We established 10 library corners, one in each classroom in the school.

In 2017, we donated 300+ English books, movies, CDs as supplement teaching materials. We also donated subscription to Raz-Plus for online English reading which allows 36 students to access 3000 leveled ebooks simultaneously.

Achievement Highlight

  • 5 continuous years of education support summer camp since 2015
  • 10 program leaders recruited.
  • 118 middle school and high school students volunteered teaching in the summer camp from 2015 to 2019
  • 600+ total local students in Shanxi Province, China, benefited from the teaching activities (2019) alone
  • Remote teaching through the most popular social media, Wechat,  to 4 classes (3-6th grade) of  Facheng School in Shanxi
  • 20 library corners set up, one per classroom in the schools
  • 13500+ Chinese books, 800+ English books, movies, and many STEM materials donated to the schools over these years
  • 1 year subscription to Raz-Plus donated to the school in year 2017, which allows 36 simultaneous online access to 3000 leveled ebooks for English reading development
  • organized and participated in fund raising events with the Gansu Education Support Team (GEST), raising $19240 collectively for financial aid to 56 students in China in (2017).
  • Donated to the GEST fund pool and helped provide financial aid to 56 students in China (2018).
  • Provided financial aids to 10 students in Facheng school (2019)
  • Donated 1000 K95 respirators to the Overlake Medical Center. and 10000 disposable face masks to Facheng School in Shanxi, China (2020)

Archives

2019 SESP archives

2018 SESP archives (Articles, Youtube, Youku, Xinhua News)

2017 SESP archives (ArticlesYoutube, Youku, News1on1)

2016 Shanxi Education Support Summer Camp Articles (By Angelina Zhang,  By Felicia Yan)

2015 Shanxi Education Support Summer Camp Articles By Haiqin Wang(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 )

Reimburse Form: Project Reimbursement /项目费用报销表

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