In March 2020, AYLUS Pearland started the Hello Wuhan project. Recognizing the extreme impact on daily life of the students in the area of Wuhan due to COVID-19, this project aims to connect with them and help academically in the ways we can as well as share cultural differences. Through family and friend contacts, as well as word of mouth, we were able to find students in Wuhan willing to participate. Many students’ parents are medical personnel or other front line workers leading the fight against the pandemic.
We held our meeting in the first week of March, using Zoom as our platform, where 11 volunteers and students each were present. Every volunteer attended a training meeting. The volunteers read passages along with the students, helped with word pronunciation and mannerisms, and conversed about cultural norms. Some of the topics discussed include quarantined life, food, school, and leisure activities.
We’ve now grown to 18 volunteers and students each, working in 9 groups with 2 students each working with 2 volunteers. Within a group, each volunteer works one session with two students per week, therefore two students have two sessions with two different volunteers per week. The session arrangement allow for the greatest amount of direct conversation time.
Volunteers attended the projects since March 1st, 2020 are:
Andy Gu, Andy Jiang, Kate Liu, Iris Chen, Emily She, Jayden Lu, Mathew Li, Baron Niu, Xiaoyu Geng, Aaron Wu, Eric Qi
Volunteers attended since March 16th are:
Hanna Sang, Michael meng, Alex Miao, Fred Guo, Sophia Lin, Stephen Mao, Thomas Feng
Written by: Andy Gu
