Connecting Hearts- Empowering Youth in Post-Earthquake Ludian Ludian, China Summer 2017 Murong Li ‘17 and Qingyi Xie ‘18 Smith College The Need Ludian, a rural county in Yunnan province, has always been listed as one of the poorest counties in China. It is home to around 400,000 people while its GDP per capita is below $1000. Ludian’s main income comes from agriculture. In recent years, young workers have tended to leave their hometown for jobs in big cities, which creates problems like left-over elders and children. Unfortunately, a 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck Ludian county on August 3, 2014, resulting in 617 deaths and at least 2,400 injuries. The earthquake created an economic loss of $66 million, exacerbating the county’s economic condition. Besides trying to restore economic and daily stability, Ludian has been facing many other challenges including children who are trying to recover from mental trauma. Though almost two and half years have passed since the earthquake, the mission to continue supporting and empowering those children in all aspects should be continued. On top of mental trauma, those children are also vulnerable to many other problems, like drug abuse and high crime rates due to Yunnan’s geographic proximity to the infamous Golden Triangle drug network. Seeing all these problems, we think it is urgent to provide those children with not only mental health care but also academic and daily life support that will enrich their summer break and impact their lives in the future. Our Goals and Resolutions We are eager to contribute to world peace under the mission of Davis Projects for Peace by empowering children’s growth and fostering community peace in Ludian where people have been suffering from poverty and natural disasters. In order to achieve these goals, we will work from two perspectives: children’s future and community harmony. First, we want to explore children’s potentials by providing them with tools to navigate the world ahead of them. Eventually, those children will be able to use those tools to make an impact on those around them. This project is centered around promoting children's self-confidence with additional mental health support and academic aid. Secondly, we hope to strengthen community ties in Ludian through constructing closer family relations and a more caring Shequ (community of public life). Partnership: Heart to Heart Community Care is a non-profit and non-governmental charity in Yunnan Province dedicated to community-based social services including child care, immigrant family care, women empowerment, and policy advocacy efforts. It aims at creating caring and supportive communities for children, women, immigrants and other disadvantaged groups. Now, Heart to Heart Community Care has 40 staff members and over 1000 volunteers who provide help for more than 30,000 disadvantaged individuals every year. Heart to Heart Community Care will provide its Ludian service center space for us to undertake this project. E Zhang, Director of Ludian Center, will help us recruit three or four volunteers and children participants. Volunteers will collaborate with us closely to interact with children and bond with the families. Yaxian Zhang, Director of Public Relations of Heart to Heart Community, will also work with us on media exposure. Detailed Plan Our project will take place in Ludian, Yunnan province from the beginning of July to the end of August. The project will be arranged as four, two-week sessions and each session will have 20-25 students. The reasons are 1) to benefit as many children as possible and 2) it is hard for every child to commit a full two-month engagement due to commitments like farming and house chores. A sample two-week session plan follows. In the first week, we will focus on building trust and connections with the children and familiarizing them with each other. In the first few days, we will organize ice-breaker games and art activities, which will help the children get used to the environment and feel comfortable talking to others. Later, we will introduce public speaking where the children will start practicing in pairs. In the second week, we will continue organizing various fun activities to further practice public speech like impromptu speech. In addition, we will organize rehearsals and peer-evaluations in preparation for the final presentation (also the closing ceremony for each session), where parents and grandparents will be invited to witness the growth and change of the children. Weeks after the two-month project, staff and volunteers from the

Heart to Heart Community Care will follow up with children participants to provide necessary support for those in need. Note: All workshops will mainly take place in the mornings because the children have to do farm works and house chores in the afternoons. However, we will utilize the afternoon time to visit their homes and build connections with their families, which will help us know each child better and design individualized plans accordingly. Self-confidence development: Inspired by our past experience, we found that confidence is key to many things such as making friends, presenting opinions in public, and achieving career success. We hope to help the children develop their confidence gradually through various creative activities, public speaking practice, academic tutoring and mental health support from us and the therapist. Academic support and mental health support are two methods that will help enrich the summer for the children and at the same time, build up their confidence level. ● Academic support: Under the Chinese educational system, students from elementary school have homework during summer break. As we strive to empower these children through various aspects, education remains as one of the most important components. Thus, we will provide academic support for English and Math every day with a purpose of not only to help and answer questions but also to teach them to be more open-minded and develop a growth mindset. Children who grow up in rural China tend to underestimate their strengths and view their futures as predetermined. Thus, we will employ the growth mindset theory that argues that people’s basic abilities can be developed through their dedication and hard work throughout the workshop. ● Mental health support: One of the main goals of this project is to pay attention to the mental health of the the local children. In addition to post-earthquake trauma, we will focus on other mental health problems like loneliness resulting from their parents being away. Thus, we will organize various activities with the help of a professional therapist whom we know with familiarity. The therapist will visit every week for one full day. In the first week, the therapist will observe children’s activities and talk to them individually. In the second week, the therapist will follow up and give advice to us and to the parents. Besides mental health support, we will also have an overview on self-defense and sex/drug education to equip the children with essential knowledge about how to protect themselves. Impacts The impact of our project will be sustainable in the long run. First, the children will be in a better position in academics and life. They will be able to actively employ different learning techniques to improve their academic experience. Our programs about self-confidence development and mental health support will help children in Ludian to become more confident and healthy. Moreover, they will also carry on the things that they learn to make a difference on those around them and influence more people. Second, Heart to Heart Community Care will be able to follow our model and continue this practice to benefit more children in the region. After each session, we will collect feedback from students to adjust the next session accordingly. Eventually, we wish to build a model that could be used by volunteers in the following summer/winter breaks to empower more children with similar needs. We hope this model can serve as an inspiration for the Heart to Heart Community Care that they can apply to different sites across Yunnan Province. Third, through our media exposure efforts, we wish to arouse public attention to help more children in rural areas. On weekends, we will fly back to Yunnan’s capital, Kunming, to meet with medias such as GoKunming and Yunnan Daily that we have close connections with to present our project. About Us Murong Li: As a Psychology major, I have studied psychological well-being of different social groups. I have abundant experience working with children of different ages in various settings, from kindergarten children to high school students in the China, US, and Japan. As a previous intern in GoKunming, I’ve built close relationships with local media and will turn this into an opportunity to market our project and encourage more exposure and participation. Qingyi Xie: As an Economics major and past Tuck Business Bridge Program participant, I specialize in Corporate Finance and Business Plan Development, so I will use my strengths to oversee the budget of this project. Also, I had experience working with teenagers coming from families in which members had disabilities during my high school years. I am passionate to devote my energy to help children in Ludian to grow.