(continued)
Challenges Today
We also face many challenges today.
In training volunteers, for example, we try our best to shock them out of the “Let me help; I can help” sort of mindset. We warn them from the start that they will be disappointed by how hard they had to work but how little they could achieve. We even ask every volunteer to read Ivan Illichʼs “To Hell with Good Intentions”. But we were rarely able to avoid post-volunteering disappointment. This is going to be a constant challenge. For now, we could only settle for letting the reality on the ground educate our volunteers.
But don't get me wrong. Our volunteers are great—fantastic in themselves. And in spite of their disappointment, which they typically come to understand much better afterwards, they are not disillusioned, and many of them continue to work with Dream Corps. Personally, some of the best times I have spent in the past few years were with Dream Corps volunteers.
The second area of challenge is expertise in library management and reading program. We are now being asked by several schools to help them set up electronic library management system so as to reduce the workload of the librarian and promote circulation. Related is training of librarians, about which we are becoming more proactive. On top of that, we have been increasingly putting our efforts on running effective reading programs that goes with open libraries. Trust me, getting ourselves to the point where we directly face these challenges have not been easy. We are happy enough about our slow but real progress.
Another challenge, central to our program, is how to regulate the lifecycle of our sites: how to assess the state of a site in the process of going from the initial opening, to collaborative operation, to locally-sustained opening and our phasing out; how to identify the site’s readiness at each stage and appropriately facilitate the transitions. By the way, the happiest moment we have enjoyed in all of our work is when the school tells us truthfully: “Thanks for your initiation and collaboration. We know how to make it work now. We don’t need you anymore.” This did happen a couple of times. And we would love to hear this more often. And so on and so forth.
All of these challenges, honestly, imply that we have to seriously grow our roots in China. While our heart and mind have always been with China, with the children of China. —We do not needing so much of a re-growth there. Organizationally, however, we do need to grow roots. Luckily, more and more of our organizers are returning to China permanently. But we still need to get ourselves registered as a non-profit in China, which is difficult, but about which we are optimistic.
Internally, to meet the challenges above, we also need employees, after all. We feel that we have figured out enough about how to achieving the goal of locally sustained open libraries that are part of everyday school life. We now need full-time staff so that we may meet the challenges, and deepen and possibly broaden our programs.
The need for employees directly translates into the challenge of fundraising. In the past, we have focused our efforts on the quality of our programs and the quality our organization; on a small scale and at a limited depth, this effort could be and had been sustained by pure volunteer work. We did not feel compelled to get much more financial resource. But now that we have shaped ourselves in a way such that we can face up to the challenges at the crux of the problem we are trying to address, we are ready to accept more funding and to use it effectively.
At the edge of “social gold rush”
Here’s how we may summarize the journey of Dream Corps:
Dream Corps 0.0 - passion-powered initiation - the spring and summer of 2004.
Dream Corps 1.0 - self-imposed apprenticeship in compassionate participation through committed action and open-mindedness - fall of 2004 - 2010
Dream Corps 2.0 - substantive partner in compassionate participation for empowering dreams - 2011.
In the past 6 years, we have educated ourselves. While we still do not have the answer, we have come to know better what the challenges are and how to address them. As an organization, we are well-poised to become Dream Corps 2.0, to play a substantive role in the unfolding “social gold rush”—or, one may call it, “social good rush”—in China today. This year, the 2010, is going to be the critical year that determines whether we can become Dream Corps 2.0.
Metaphor for Participation
Let me close with a couple of metaphors. It is often said that the United States is a melting pot wherein people from all over the world equally become American. In Canada, the preferred metaphor is tapestry, where every part retains their identity, but bound into a new unity.
Dream Corps’s way, it seems to me, is rather stir-fry, Chinese style, where every part takes part in the transformation of all parts towards something fantastic, spiced with unwavering idealism, grounded in honest realism, and anchored in an ultimate respect for the potential in every child.
If you like, or think you could like Chinese cuisine, join us, donate to us, or support us in any other way, but most importantly, participate in your own way towards ushering in the day when all children in China will enjoy quality education.
read more...
Posts
