“四川老师”“国际互助网”联手为灾区儿童服务

Dear Sichuan Teachers Members,

Thank you for your support. Sichuan Teachers
(http://sichuanteachers.org) is a group of volunteers who pledged to
provide long-term academic help, tutorials and social network to
children directly affected by the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. We are
addressing you again to report our progress in the last few months.

We are delighted to inform you that our volunteers have already
offered some long-distance and local teaching. We have about 100
teachers and 100 students as we initially targeted. It has taken a
longer time than we thought because we wanted to start with a selected
group of teachers and those children who really needed help. Indeed,
our teacher profiles are very impressive. Our teachers include those
in renowned institutes such as Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, Berkeley,
Michigan, Chicago, Julliard, Florida, Illinois, Wisconsin, Toronto, Waterloo,
Queen's, Australian National, Peking, Tsinghua, Fudan, Jiaotong, Sichuan,
HKUST, Hong Kong, CUHK, etc. The percentages of them having completed or
completing their PhD, Masters, undergraduate and high school degrees
are approximately 20, 20, 50 and 10. Their profiles are available at:
https://match.sichuanteachers.org/?q=en/view/teachers_search. Our
staff Xianfei Xu, Creative Director of Chengdu Lanqi Advertising
Company and Lonnie Hodge, CEO of CultureFishMedia, have been helping
with the current and future marketing plans.

On the student side, we didn't do as well initially. After a few
rounds of contacts, we thought we have secured the 100 orphans and
traumatized children relocated to Beijing. We were told only after we
have sent them the teacher profiles that all these children have been
relocated to a very good school with abundant resources in Beijing.
The great work of these Beijing colleagues is actually good news to
all of us. This implies, however, that we have to restart the student
sampling in Sichuan. We approached many children in person. In
August, our staff Li Yong (the coordinator of the Outreach Team and a
lawyer in Chengdu) and Tang Mei (a student from Sichuan University)
investigated several recovering centers in Chengdu, and obtained
profiles of 50 amputees. In October, the Outreach Team launched
another search for students who have moved back to their hometowns
from the recovering centers. Yu Ming, a professor at the Sichuan
University, has found additional 50 students from the affected areas
such as Beichuan and Minyang. We finally have all we wanted and
matched all of our students (see end of this letter for a partial
list). There are a few excess teachers whom we will likely match
immediately when we have the next round of students.

The surveys, conducted by our staff Alex Zhao (a student at U. of
Michigan), showed that quite a few respondents are still active in
their lessons. Most students indicated that cell phone communication
is a reasonable means especially because most calling plans in China
allow an option to receive calls free of charge. In addition, Sichuan
Teachers has offered limited amount of cell or land phones and calling
minutes to the students and volunteer teachers during the testing
phase. On the other hand, we have lost connections with some teachers
for reasons such as relocation and change of contacts. However, some
members have doubted the effect of long-distance teaching and some
teachers are quitting. We will rematch the students with other
teachers very soon. Our teams are working on the issue of how to
sustain the stability of the matches.

Another problem is that we didn't do as well in learning from other
organizations such as Sowers Actions that have valuable experience in
rural or long-distance education. We are restructuring our NGO
Research Team and other teams. Jen Lin, a PhD graduate at U. of
Chicago, has offered a first draft of a 12-month plan. Arnold Fang, a
United Nations Children's Fund officer has completed a first round of
exercise to scope our efforts to deliver our services using more
efficient means. He will be completing it and the 12-month plan in the
next months. In respond to the three main suggestions from the report
by Arnold sent to the core team, we are planning to work on three
aspects. First, the Sponsorship Team has been looking for office space
in Chengdu and/or Beijing, and has been searching for full-time staff;
Albert Chan (Director of The Lobby Public Affairs Consultants Ltd in
Hong Kong and the coordinator of the Media and Government Relations
Team) and Benjamin Chiao (now Assistant Professor at the Guanghua
School of Management at Peking University) have provided some initial
funds for this. Second, we are structuring the group as a formal
organization. We hope to establish local chapters in Hong Kong,
Sichuan, Beijing and the US. We are recruiting directors of these
local chapters. If any of you are interested in these positions,
please write to sichuanteachers@yahoogroups.com. Initially the
major local chapter will be in Beijing since Benjamin has recruited
some (and potentially a lot more) volunteers at Peking University and
other local universities to execute substantial work. Also, Benjamin
has established connections with several mayors in Sichuan through a
long-term rescue effort signed between the Peking University business
school and these cities. Third, in order to facilitate communication
between volunteer teachers, we have changed
sichuanteachers@yahoogroups.com into an unmoderated list, meaning that
each one is able to email the group to discuss teaching experience,
problems, feedback and the like. Besides, the teachers may use the
forums on our website at
https://match.sichuanteachers.org/?q=en/forum. Our IT Team
coordinator Sheng Liang, CEO of BaseMind, has offered much help in the
website development together with other open source programmers.

Local teaching has started slower than we thought due to various
obstacles. However, 30 teachers have offered to teach on site. In
return, some schools have offered free accommodation and food.
According to Li Yong, a Harvard student has gone to a Wenchuan
elementary school relocated at Pixian near the outskirt of Chengdu.
She will be teaching there for one year after having taken a year off
from school. She teaches 400 children in 20 classes per week. Two
teachers from the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications
and Chinese Agricultural University also went to the affected areas.

Currently, we are experimenting a few matching methods. Our matching
design team members Vivian Chow (a Masters graduate at U. of Michigan)
and Sen Cheung (a student at U. of Michigan) went to Sichuan in July
to investigate the local needs. The matching method we used for these
few months is through a review committee led by Sonia Wu (a consultant
at Washington DC). We want to thank Yan Chen (a professor at U. of
Michigan) and Du Ye (a PhD candidate at U. of Michigan) for offering
advice on matching theory. Our committee studies the profiles and
suggests a match. In the future we may have other types of matching.
Please refer to https://match.sichuanteachers.org/?q=en/node/40 for
some tentative details.

Lihong Liu (a PhD student at NYU and Editorial Team member) and
Stanley Wu (a student at U. of Toronoto) have offered much help in
writing letters and translation.

Albert and our Hong Kong lawyers (Jonathan Man and Kennis Tai) have
made considerable efforts in establishing us legally. Albert has
donated funds to hire a professional CPA (chartered accountant) in
Hong Kong to help put together documents to register "Sichuan
Teachers" as a limited "company". We have completed the registration.
Following this, the accountant will proceed with filing applications
with the Inland Revenue Department to apply for tax exemption (or
non-profit making) status for our organization. This process will
take longer, perhaps six months. The core team has recommended Albert
and Benjamin to be the founding directors. We will have more formal
procedure to vote for the Board of Directors in the near future.
Please do write to us if you are interested.

Honestly, we are moving fairly slowly but steadily. We are however
very hopeful that we will learn much at the conclusion of the testing
period and develop a more comprehensive plan to meet the needs of our
stakeholders. We are concluding this testing period now. We will write
again when we have developed a longer-term plan. Let's work hand in
hand to help the children who survived this terrible disaster. Even if
we haven't thank you specifically, we have tried to take into
consideration the suggestions from each of you. Thank you for your
support and enthusiasm.

Yours faithfully,
The Sichuan Teachers

P.S. This is an anonymized list of some of our students

GENDER AGE DETAILS
M 初二
同班有10多个同学遇难,自己没有受伤,家里房屋倒塌,目前住帐篷,对老师年龄和性别无要求,希望数学和物理方面的辅导老师.家里座机电话,每周一次上课,平时都在家里
M 初一
希望辅导老师年龄大一点,男老师,辅导科目是生物和地理,目前成绩在班里前几名,英语成绩一般.家里座机电话,每周一次上课,平时都在家里
M 初二
地震中受伤,右大腿截肢,目前在成都假肢厂康复中心接受治疗,刚装上假肢,希望找一个年龄较小的辅导老师,辅导科目是化学.有一个成都的志愿者回国后可能去看望他
F 初三 理科比较差一些,文科成绩较好,希望辅导老师是年龄较大的女老师,辅导科目是英语和数学,
F 初一 左小腿截肢,英语成绩较好,喜欢画画,还会在康复中心住大概1个月,希望找一个女老师辅导一下她的英语和绘画
F 初一 右小腿截肢,语文和英语成绩较好,有电脑,但是目前无法上网,希望找一个女辅导老师
M 初一
班长,未受伤,曾经为未能救出同班同学和老师而内疚了很久,班上同班同学死亡有20多人,希望找一个女老师辅导一下他英语,希望老师和蔼年轻一些
F 受骨裂伤,目前在郑州住院,非常爱学习,只有她的病房的电话,
M 初二 初二男生，喜欢篮球
F 8岁 非常爱学习，语文数学都是班上第一，很爱读书，班上快一半的孩子在地震中遇难
M 初二 左腿骨折，右腿高位截肢，对老师年龄性别无要求，希望数学英语得到辅导
M 小学四年级 右腿高位截肢，母亲在地震中去世，父亲要出外打工，只能将他放在学校里，对老师要求—男老师，二十多岁，希望语数外得到辅导
M 高一 双腿高位截肢——女老师，英语。
F 初一 双小腿截肢——女老师，年龄不限，希望语数外得到辅导。
F 10岁 要求女老师，希望学英语,在医院没电话
F 10岁 要求女老师，希望学英语,在医院没电话
M 高二 北川的，回去会换号，一个高2的男生，很内向
M 右腿高位截肢，要求女老师，补数学，英语
F 中学 单腿截肢，不方便上网，英语，北川中学
M 中学 单腿截肢，不方便上网，英语，北川中学
F 中学 单腿截肢，不方便上网，英语，北川中学
F 初中 "单腿截肢，不方便上网，没有要求哪一科，什邡的，是个初中生
"
F 没有受伤，但是妈妈没被救出，希望得到帮助，
F 初中 严重骨折，初中生，对学科无具体要求。
F 初中 严重骨折，初中生，对学科无具体要求。广元市青川县关庄镇
M 初中 严重骨折，初中生，对学科无具体要求。广元市青川县骑马乡
M 初中 严重骨折，初中生，对学科无具体要求。
M 初中 严重骨折，初中生，对学科无具体要求。广元市青川县红光乡小荆村樊家岭
F 初中 严重骨折，初中生，对学科无具体要求。广元市青川县观音店乡董家村
F 初中 严重骨折，初中生，对学科无具体要求。广元市青川县骑马乡中原村6组
F 初中 严重骨折，初中生，对学科无具体要求。广元市青川县骑马乡中原村7组
F 初中 严重骨折，初中生，对学科无具体要求。广元市青川县骑马乡民主村8组
M 高考毕业 刚高考完，考了个师范学校，广元市青川县木鱼镇文武村7社
M 3年级/9岁 很想学数学和英语，广元市青川县黄坪乡群乐村赵家岭组
F 小学 一只脚的4个脚趾被截，伤情较轻，父亲是教师，平武县南坝镇
F 四年级/9岁 一只腿大腿截肢
F 高中毕业 "绵竹汉王东汽中学，高中已毕业，左大腿截肢，想要加强英语方面的辅导
"
M 5岁
左腿高位截肢，右腿小腿截肢，虽然很小但是很聪明，已经学会写很多字（他爸爸教的，但他爸也懂不了多少，字写对了，但笔画都是错的，看到他那么想学习，我真的很感动，并且会表演特技哦～）很想学习～
M 小学 绵竹广济镇土门中心小学，想补英语
M 小学 棉竹汉旺新开村，武都帐篷学校，想学英语
F 高一 北川中学，一只腿大腿截肢
M 5岁 汶川县银杏乡一碗水村，很想学习的一个小男孩
F 高一 北川中学，双大腿截肢，高一
M 19 家住唐家山堰塞湖地区，家庭成员4人，父母和一个老奶奶，在这次地震中，房屋被淹，母亲受伤。
M 19 全家共4人，父亲残疾，我和弟弟上高中，在5.12地震中，房屋倒塌，财产遭受重大损失。
F 18 全家6人，婆婆爷爷、父母和弟弟。在5.12地震中房屋严重受损，通往家乡的山路被堵塞，所有的农产品都不能运出。
F 17 家庭成员4人，弟弟上小学，爸爸下岗多年；母亲务农，农药使眼睛带残疾，在5。12地震中，房屋倒塌。
F 19 全家4人，家住唐家山堰塞湖地区，房屋被淹没，母亲体弱多病。
F 18 全家4人，父母和哥哥均务农，父亲在地震中受伤，房屋倒塌，全家人都住在板房里。
F 18 全家4人，哥哥大学刚毕业，父母文化程度很低，在家务农，房屋倒塌。
F 17 全家5人，爷爷和父母都是地道的农民，姐姐读大学，5.12地震使我家的房屋和土地遭到了严重的损坏。
F 21 全家4人，弟弟上初中，房屋被毁，母亲受伤。
F 21 父母年迈多病，母亲常年吃药，在5.12地震中，房屋财产遭到严重的损坏。
M 18
全家4人，父母是典型的农民，母亲在一次重病中，听力严重下降，姐姐上大学，房屋财产遭到了严重的损坏，最惨的是5.12地震把我埋了近80个小时使我失去了双腿（双腿高位截肢）。
F 17 全家5人，我和2个妹妹均在上学，在5.12地震中房屋财产遭到严重损失。
M 8 全家3人都幸存，父母均在工作，母亲是北川县职业中学教师，家庭经济受损重，自己愿意参加该项活动。
M 12 全家三人均幸存，母亲是北川县职业中学教师，在5.12地震中，房屋成了危房，自己愿意参加该项活动。
F 15 全家三人均幸存，父母均是北川县职业中学教师，母亲在5.12地震中抢救学生腰椎骨折，家庭全部财产被埋，自己愿意参加该项活动。
F 17 全家三人均幸存，父母都是教师，在5.12地震中家庭财产被埋，自己愿意参加该项活动。
F 13 全家三人，母亲在地震中遇难，房屋财产全部损毁，父亲是北川县职业中学的教师，本人愿意参加该项活动。
F 14 全家三人均幸存，家住唐家山堰塞湖地区，房屋财产全部被淹没，父母均是教师，本人愿意参加该项活动。
F 13 全家三人，母亲遇难，房屋财产遭到严重损毁，父亲是北川县职业中学教师，本人愿意参加该项活动。
F 13 全家三人均幸存，房屋财产全部损毁，母亲是典型的农民，父亲是北川县职业中学的教师，本人愿意参加该项活动。
F 17
家住阿坝羌族藏族自治州茂县渭门乡椒园村五组，全家六人全部幸存，家有80岁的老奶奶，父母和弟弟妹妹，家人住在政府提供的版房里，我和弟弟妹妹上学。
F 15 地震和泥石流已经使我和家人背井离乡，住在政府提供的板房。
F 16 家住北川县擂鼓镇，全家6人，地震使我家房屋倒塌，财产全部损毁，父母和姐姐被迫外出打工，我和爷爷奶奶暂住在政府提供的板房里。
F 17 全家6人，父母是典型的农民，地震使我家房屋倒塌，财产全部损毁，我和妹妹上学。
F 16 父母是典型的农民，姐姐在外打工，地震使我家的财产遭受了重大的损失。
F 15 在5.12特大地震中，我家房屋倒塌，财产遭到了重大的损失，父母是典型的农民，姐姐读高三，我读高一。
F 15 在5.12特大地震中，我家房屋倒塌，庄家被泥石流全部冲毁，父母是典型的农民，现暂住在政府提供的板房里。
F 15 在5.12特大地震中，我家房屋倒塌，茅坑、猪圈等财产全部被毁，家人暂住在政府提供的板房里。
F 16 因5.12特大地震，我家的房屋全部倒塌，几位亲人受伤，非常悲痛。
F 16 在5.12特大地震中，我家房屋倒塌财产遭到重大损失，几位亲人受伤，非常悲痛。
F 16 在5.12特大地震中，我家的房屋倒塌，全部财产被摧毁，几位亲人遇难，我们全家人的心情悲痛万分
F 16 在5.12特大地震中，住地滑坡、房屋倒塌、庄稼颗粒无收，我和弟弟上学。
F 17 在5.12特大地震中，我的家园受到严重损失，自己也在地震中受伤。
F 15 在5.12特大地震中，房屋倒塌，泥石流冲毁了全部庄稼，父母是典型的农民，心里非常痛苦；我和弟弟在上学。
F 16 在5.12特大地震中，房屋倒塌，财产全部损毁，我和妹妹在上学。
F 16 在5.12地震中，房屋倒塌，财产损失严重。
F 15 父母是典型的农民，在家务农，姐姐在外务工，在5.12地震中，家园损失惨重，面目全非。
F 16 房屋倒塌，家已经不成样了，家里的一切都没了，我和妹妹要上学，我恨这地震。
F 16 5.12地震使我失去了亲人、同学和家园，我的心理受到了很大的创伤，现在不管听到什么都觉得有点怕。
F 16 房屋倒塌，财产全部损毁，好在家人无事。
F 16
在5.12地震中，家庭损失惨重，失去了很多，但很幸的是小家庭人员均在，大家庭的部分亲人遇难，现在家里正在努力修建房屋，这次地震本人的心理受到了创伤，但经过几个月的调节，已经基本恢复，我希望我在以后的学习中能好好学习，为建设家园而奋斗。