Tan Yifan

    cicitan2011@gmail.com

    LI BAOJUN, a professional social worker and lecturer at Shenzhen Polytechnic, is not a big shot, but he is becoming a minor celebrity among Shenzhen’s 460,000 registered volunteers.

    With 6,000 total service hours and his special contributions to environmental protection and psychological counseling in rural areas, Li, 35, was honored with “The Mayor’s Award for Social Service.”

    “By being a volunteer and offering my services in various places across China, I feel I have remodeled my character and stepped into the deepest part of my heart,” said Li. “It has been the best gift in my life to take a breath underneath the starry sky in a remote area of the country after a day’s work; I know I made a difference.”

    Serving in the far west

    Li spent seven consecutive summers traveling in Tibet and Qinghai Province offering professional help to an environmental organization called Green River Environmental Protection Association of Sichuan Province, whose purpose is to call upon professionals and experts to investigate the natural status of the Changjiang River and preserving its eco-system.

    “I discovered the association in early 2003,” recalled Li. “I was watching a TV program about the endangered Tibetan antelopes one day in my apartment. Knowing how few animals were left and how little people had done to protect their living spaces, I wanted to help.”

    Li said he searched online, looking for an organization that promised to protect such rare animals.

    “I found Green River. I applied online and couple of days later, I received their warm reply,” said Li.

    In the summer of 2003, Li first walked on the land of Hoh Xil, one of the headstreams of the Changjiang River. He participated in a project to record the amount of trash tossed by people along the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. As trains pass through some parts of the Tibetan antelope’s habitat, the changes caused by human invasion have caused public concern.

    “Only three of us from Guangdong area joined that years’ self-supported project,” said Li. “We spent a whole summer walking about 400 kilometers from the foot of Kunlun Mountain in Qinghai Province to the edge of Tanggula Mountain [on the border between Qinghai Province and Tibet].”

    “We lived in small huts built by the organization and often spent a full day in untraversed areas,” Li added. “The thin air caused big trouble for us. Most of the time, we ate potatoes and had to reuse water and tissues because of a lack of supplies,” Li added.

    Li and his peers wrote a report after the long trek and handed it to the local government.

    “It finally paid off,” said Li. “Both the local and Central governments took our suggestions and built a trash recycling system along the road.”

    The following year, Li participated in another project, which lasted for five years and was also organized by the association, to record the life changes of Tibetan people.

    “The previous volunteering experience gave me huge encouragement in volunteering in the area,” said Li. “When the association called for people to help Tibetan people preserve their cultural heritage, I expressed my willingness to do it.”

    The core of Li’s team was three professors and an interpreter. They spent five summers recording more than 400,000 characters and taking over 3,000 photos in Tibetan communities scattered in Qinghai’s Yushu area.

    “It seemed fresh and eye-opening for volunteers who had never visited the places and communicated daily with people there, but if you had to repeat the same questions to people over and over again and work 14 hours a day, you would feel tired,” he said.

    Li said their lives were threatened by many traffic accidents and diseases. “We were very afraid of car accidents and we nearly died many times. We had to explore for new roads from time to time and bear the pain of constant headaches and other altitude sicknesses. My nose would not stop bleeding.”

    In addition to projects that make full use of his expertise, Li also joined a glacier research program in 2010 in Qumarleb County, Qing-hai Province.

    Serving left

    behind children

    As a founder of the social work association of Shenzhen Polytechnic, Li and his students have served left-behind children since 2005.

    “I was the beneficiary of a charity scholarship when I studied in college,” Li said. “I was always grateful for receiving help from the public, which triggered my intention to pay it back.”

    “As a man who grew up in a rural area, I know about the education and living conditions of children in such places and am concerned for the left behind children,” Li added.

    To bring joy to those children and comfort them during vacations, Li and his team members have visited many small villages in Guangdong and Guizhou provinces. They usually spend a weeklong vacation with the children, teaching them and encouraging them to communicate.

    “Most of the left-behind children have psychological problems. They refuse to talk with people and behave strange,” Li said. “We provide psychological guidance to them and we have started to train local teachers in basic psychology.”

    Hundreds of teachers have received such training with the effort of Li’s team.

    “We treat Li as one of our residents,” said Huang Weiping, director of Heping Education Bureau in Guangdong Province. “He trained a lot of teachers and influenced us by his actions.”

    “Li has changed many people’s lives, not only those he has helped, but also his teammates,” said Huang Yanhua, a former female student of Li. “He inspired us to discover a different world and provided us the chances to contact the outside world.”

    “He managed to overcome many difficulties and shouldered great responsibilities,” Huang added. “He inspired me to live more passionately, and even though I left school for six years, I am still willing to make changes for me and others.”

    Serving for

    more families

    With the success of his previous endeavor, Li started a new project last year to help families with left-behind children.

    Now, he is preparing to register for an organization that can bring happiness to those families.

    “I want to invite their parents to join my program, which will teach them to communicate with their children,” he said.

    He plans to recruit 100 members and train them to master the keys of effective communication and happiness.

    “My vision is to pass pure happiness to more people in the country, to realize a greater value of life and discuss the true meaning of living as a human being,” Li elaborated.

    “By being a volunteer and offering my services in various places across China, I feel I have remodeled my character and stepped into the deepest part of my heart.”

    — Li Baojun, a professional social worker who was honored with “The Mayor’s Award for Social Service”