"More Reading and More Happiness" Student Aid Project (2) Opens the window to the world

“A room without books is like a room without windows.” A room without windows, there is insufficient light and the air is poor; People that do not read, is like closing the window to their souls, living in the dark room without windows. For the children in the Juela School, located in the remote mountainous area of Yushu Qinghai, books are like the bridge to connect with the outside world. However, even the basic facility and education are very difficult in this environment, so reading extracurricular books is a luxury dream for them.

DENER Children Foundation’ project “More Reading, More Happiness” is our first step for the children to get closer to the dream. In order to ensure a smooth execution of the project, we prepared for a long time. From the beginning while writing the plan, we’ve consulted various suggestions. Because in the remote mountainous area, these children lack the multi-learning resources and opportunities such as sports, art, music and reading. Our original intention is to make these disadvantaged children enjoy reading. And through reading books would open their horizons, see a wider world and therefore increase their self-confidence.

Before the plan, we thought about it again and again. For this first list of books, we were very cautious. We thought that if we were to ask for donated books in public, the content of the books may be uneven and the books may not necessarily be suitable for the school children. In order to make reading become part of them, we have a long-term plan starting from book selection. We hope that books would be comprehensive, diversified and have a positive meaning. The books would not only provide new knowledge, but also inspiration and development to complete personality.

After discussions, we decided on more than two hundred Chinese books to donate. The choice of books include science, fairy tale of literature, geographical and cultural and adolescent inspiration etc. The content of the books is also picked suitable for children in the second and third grade and each type of choices is rich in different purposes.

Encyclopedic of science – ” Encyclopedia of Chinese children phonetic version”, “I wonder why”, ” Animal World Encyclopedia”, … and so on. This category is intended to cultivate children in reverse thinking, arouse their curiosity and understanding of all aspects of knowledge

Literature fairy tale – ” My first set of world famous”, ” Century fairy tale picture book”, ” Avanti classic story series”, … These classic fairy tales can inspire children’s imagination. Books are scientifically graded; the words range from easy to difficult and from least words to the most. Telling classic stories in an easy and simple way for children.

Geography Humanities – ” Hillier speaking world history, world geography, art history”, ” Journey of the picture book set”, ” Chinese geography, history written for children”, …etc. Using excellent picture books to allow children to understand the customs of different countries and world geography. The book uses different landscape pictures and allusions to enrich the history and geography. By reading world history, world geography, and art history, we hope children can extend their horizons.

Inspirational growth – ” Warm heart picture book set”, ” Children’s book Part I by Richard McClure Scarry”…etc. We hope children can learn to confide and listen, to be grateful and content, to be friendly and help each other, to give and share, to unite and cooperate, to be independent and brave, to grow and be confident. In addition, this category also shared everyday lives of different societies to children such as urban assistance, farm work, construction of the building process, fire operations, occupational division of labor…etc for the children to understand and develop cognitive skills.

We have categorized and numbered these first set of books to be donated. The numbers are arranged by school name and book types. After we have pasted all the book numbers and stamped them, we took them to the post office and sent them to the school.

Selecting and compiling books was just the beginning of the plan. To enable the school to have a perfect reading room in the future, we began to help them establish a complete reading room management system and rules. One of the volunteer teachers has been serving and managing in the library for a long time. She is very familiar with the entire library management processes, therefore she is responsible for writing the process and related protocols.

We put the library management system process and rules into the booklet for the school teachers to use.

In this “More Reading and More Happiness” project, we also planned a book club activity. The teachers of DENER led the children to read. First is to allow the children to enjoy reading in an easy way so they will indirectly like reading. Second, through this activity, it will give local teachers the opportunity to observe reading sessions and let teachers communicate with one another. We hope that this activity will enable teachers to continue to promote reading sessions in the future.

Open the window to the world is not easy, just like the teachers who teach in Juela Elementary School. Their responsibility is not only to teach, but also to take care of children living. These teachers gave up the excellent conditions and comfortable environment in a big city to come to the mountains to teach to these children for their better future. And our volunteers must complete many small and tedious work while face the lack of manpower and funds. From the discussion of book lists, the preparation of manuals, to the planning of activities, execution of all the implementation details with the school management and teachers as well as facing high altitude sickness. Fortunately, we had our firm faith, believing that we must spread our wings on our own in order to see a different sky. Therefore, with this determination, this activity began.

More​

Donation Support

More