Student volunteers teach children in rural west

Fifty college students from Beijing volunteered to spend a summer in China’s more remote and rural west.
The students from Beijing Normal, China Agricultural and Beijing Forestry universities worked in groups of 10 in five areas in Shaanxi and Ningxia provinces.
The volunteers taught elementary-school children in impoverished areas about Confucian culture, which emphasizes the union of knowledge and culture to enhance lives, as well as English, the environment, science, exercise, music, reading and Chinese history.
Many of the students said they learned how to live in poor conditions while still remaining healthy and safe. Most of them lived on less than RMB3 (45 US cents) a day, according to one volunteer in Shaanxi. And in the drought-riddled Ningxia, volunteers learned how to conserve water.
China.org.cn reported one student as saying, "People use rainwater that was stored six years ago."