Reported by Cassie Tammy Wang
Greater Princeton AYLUS (GPA) branch in NJ has an important project of “Culture Promotion” for its members to choose and focus on. GPA member Tony Wenxuan Wang, who is very gifted in public speaking and more, has been actively giving weekly lectures on Chinese History to other children, and providing educational volunteer service to unfortunate children of rural area in China. So here comes the story of Tony:
Volunteer Services Performed by Tony Wenxuan Wang:
My name is Tony Wenxuan Wang. I’m a 6th grader at Princeton Academy of the Sacred Heart. I have a lot of hobbies. I play golf, wrestling, piano and violin. I’ve played piano for about 6 years and just picked up the violin last year. Most days I spend over an hour on reading books. I like to read books a lot, especially Chinese history books. I’ve read more than 50 Chinese history books.
I like to do humor, for example, stand-up comedy. I’ve performed quite a few. The most recent stand-up comedy I performed was in the Merwick Care and Rehabilitation Center in Plainsboro on December 30th, 2018. It was a part of a “Music from Heart” Performance held by GPA of Alliance of Youth Leaders in the United States. I also joined the Speech and Debate club in Princeton Academy.
I figured that I should do something because I knew a lot of Chinese history. So, I started a Chinese Culture/History class in my basement two years ago. Usually, I have about 6 or 7 students. The most students I had for one class was 18, and some of them were even older than me. Date of my classes since I joined GPA are: January 6th, 13th, and 21st, 2019 (1.5 hour for each class).
In August 2018, I went to China. My mom started a program called “Summer Camp in the Village”. She gathered ten families and brought us to a remote town called Wang Chang in Hubei Province. The town is really poor. No big house, no streetlights. Most of the people use motorcycles. In this town, there is a very small elementary school. It has only one building with two storeys and 3 rooms on each floor. It’s summer. The average temperature there was 89℉. But the school has no air-condition (A/C), not only because the A/C itself costs a fortune for this poor village, and also because keeping the A/C on during the hot summer could be too expensive for them to afford considering the high cost of electricity to be used. So it was blazing hot. People are probably thinking,” How is a summer camp going to happen here? It’s crazy!” Well, we were crazy at those days.
Before we went there, we were told that the students at that school only had two kinds of classes: Language and Math. So, what we were going to do was to give them their first summer camp. We lived in this town for 7 days. I taught the students Chinese History and English. Some parents and kids from the other 9 families taught Science, Chinese Poetry, Arts, and Sports, such as Soccer and Badminton. Every day I had 3 classes and each class was about an hour. I was exhausted after one day teaching without A/C, but I could see that the students were very, very happy. They called me “Teacher Tony”. On the afternoon of the 5th day, we had a ceremony and all of us performed shows. I did a stand-up comedy. On the 6th day, we went to some students’ houses and brought them gifts and money.
This wasn’t the end of the story. Once returned to the United States, we organized a fundraiser for this school to help replace their desks, which were in terrible condition. To start, I donated $100. Recently, we have met our donation target, ￥30,000, which is about $4,500, and Mom sent the money to that school. The good news is the students there will have their new desks after the Lunar New Year Winter Break. This summer I will go there, again, and I would like to bring a few GPA members along. It makes me feel good when I could use my abilities to help children in need.
Everyone may have the willing to help others. The only two things in the way are whether you have the courage to do it and maybe you can’t find a chance to help. Joining GPA makes it much easier because there’s a lot of chances to help people. Helping people is making the world better. And when we make our world better, we’re helping other people. I’m so grateful for GPA, which has given me a chance to help the world and help the people.
A Note from the GPA President Cassie Tammy Wang:
We are so impressed by what Tony has achieved in his unique lectures for the GPA “Culture Promotion” project. Also impressed by his summer camp volunteer service in order to help children in need in all ways including the recent fundraising event. We are proud of you, Tony! GPA welcomes more and more members to become committed to volunteering, either to follow Tony to build a team, or do it in their unique ways.
