Naperville Central senior Harvey Wang is known in the area for his success on the links with the Redhawk Boys golf team. There is much more to his daily routine than just hitting the driving range or working on his short game. Wang is also a teacher for a non-profit youth organization called Education for All Foundation, which teaches English to more than 500 rural students in China through Zoom.
“It all started when we went on a volunteer trip to the remote province somewhere in China, in the north of China, and the volunteer trip had nothing to do with education.”
What emerged from an annual volunteer trip soon turned into a project designed to help make a difference by providing these students in China with the education that will help them advance their future learning. While visiting a village in Ningxia (Ning-Zhuh) China, Harvey realized that many of these children needed additional help.
“They didn’t really have an English teacher and they didn’t have the resources to do that, so we thought that if we were fluent in Mandarin and English and lived in both countries personally, we thought we had an advantage and we did I think it is a blessing to be bilingual to help these students. “
The sessions have been held since 2018, with Wang teaching mostly English. But over time, he and many other volunteers were able to bring more topics into the lesson plans.
“We only taught what we knew from Word documents, but while we were still very inexperienced, we saw that the children reacted really well and became more confident as the year went on. We thought this was a really useful thing and we can actually make a difference in these students’ lives, so we started the expansion and everything went from there. “
While the teacher and his students continue all current meetings on a screen, he has a plan that provides for everyone to be taken out of the virtual classroom.
“We are planning a trip to one of the villages to meet the students personally and meet the administrators of the local teachers and further plan how we can help them.”
While the goal is to give everyone the learning experience they need, Harvey Wang hopes he can inspire others to take on challenges that help one another.
“It doesn’t matter how old you are or how old you are. Everyone can change something.”
As reporting for Naperville Sports Weekly, I’m Patrick Codo.
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