Chen Siqi vankochensq@163.com FOR all the concerned talk about heavy workloads encroaching on personal lives, dedicated volunteers are still persistent in their altruistic efforts in everyday life. These everyday heroes walk among us, showing genuine care and concern for those who need help without expecting anything in return. Shenzhen, boasting 381,000 inspiring volunteers, is a caring city where one in every five residents is registered as a volunteer. At an event marking the 19th Shenzhen Volunteer Day on March 5, volunteers shared their work and shed light on the diverse contributions of the city’s robust volunteer community. A helping hand back home “During this year’s Spring Festival, our team created a mini-program that helped travelers return home during the festive travel rush despite brutal weather conditions,” shared Deng Di, a tech volunteer from Tencent. Continuous freezing snow and rain affected central and eastern China in early February. Deng assembled a team of six to develop, in a mere 11 hours, a mini-program that allowed travelers to report weather conditions, thereby alerting other travelers to current conditions. When the mini-program launched at 3 a.m. Feb. 5, it received thousands of help requests and garnered over 200,000 visits within hours. Support swelled as the number of reports surged, and over 400 Tencent employees ended up volunteering to help. Deng, a product manager at Tencent, began to engage in volunteer work in 2021 when Henan Province was battered by heavy rain, which prompted him and his colleagues to aid those affected by disseminating real-time information. This experience led him to engage in similar initiatives during the COVID-19 pandemic. He and his team developed a platform for residents to share urgent medical needs, which facilitated mutual assistance in neighborhoods. “I can use my skills to help others,” Deng told Shenzhen Daily. “When I did the voluntary job, I think it’s my way of giving back to society and making a difference, which is a meaningful thing to me.” The Tencent Voluntary Association, a spontaneous creation of Tencent’s employees, now has more than 20,000 members who have logged more than 200,000 hours of volunteer time collectively. Empowered by students Liu Yue, whose job involves overseeing volunteer work at Shenzhen University, found a profound source of inspiration from the students themselves. Without any volunteering experience before taking on this responsibility, she was moved by the unwavering dedication and selflessness she witnessed among the students. This led her to begin volunteering. In July 2023, Liu led a group of 20 students to Liyuan County in Heyuan City, Guangdong Province, for a two-week volunteer-teaching program. “The county is less developed. When news spread of our courses, which include chemistry and physics experiments that they can hardly get access to normally, the number of local kids registering soon surpassed our expectation,” Liu said. The team had to purchase more materials in order to take in the unexpected number of children. For both Liu and the student volunteers, this experience marked their first exposure to life in such rural areas. “They [the student volunteers] could have the option to spend their holiday traveling or enjoying home comforts, but these students chose to impart knowledge to the county children,” said Liu. “I was deeply moved by the students’ spirit, which compelled me to undertake volunteer work as well,” Liu told Shenzhen Daily. Some of Liu’s past volunteer work includes supporting faculty and students in their fight against COVID-19 during the pandemic. Reflecting on her experiences, Liu explained that engaging with student volunteers revealed the boundless potential within each of us. The students’ enthusiasm motivated her to push the boundaries of her own efforts, spurring her to continually strive to participate in better and more impactful projects. Rapid response to emergencies Yang Mingchuan, secretary-general of the Shenzhen Public Safety Volunteer Federation, shared two compelling stories about emergency rescue efforts conducted by a dedicated volunteer team with the help of automated external defibrillators (AEDs). The latest survey showed that every year in China, 1.04 million patients suffer cardiac arrest. Intervention within the first four minutes is crucial for saving lives. However, it often takes an average of 10 minutes for ambulances to reach the scene, resulting in a success rate of no higher than 1%. To address this challenge, Yang and his team are dedicated to spreading emergency rescue knowledge throughout China and recruiting more people to become life-saving volunteers. They started by collaborating with Ele.me (which means “Are you hungry?” in Chinese), a leading services and on-demand delivery platform in China, to train delivery persons. Now, a total of 1.5 million delivery people are equipped with basic emergency skills that could help save lives. The federation has expanded its efforts to encourage more volunteers to join the emergency rescue team. Yang and his team have conducted over 15,000 training sessions in more than 160 cities since 2019, affecting millions of individuals both in person and online. Yang hails from an underdeveloped small town in Guizhou Province. Charity programs offered him a chance to acquire knowledge in a key high school in Zhejiang Province, and that knowledge led to Yang being admitted to a prestigious university. Yang has a strong desire to give back to society because of the gratitude he has for the opportunities he has received. “I was called by destiny to take responsibility and contribute to the common good. My way is to do public service, something that is worth a lot to others,” Yang said. He aims to expand emergency rescue training across China. | 