My name is Grace Chen. I am an 8-year-old golfer, and I am starting a donation program to support childhood leukemia research to save other children’s lives. Leukemia is the most common childhood cancer, affecting more than 3,500 children in the U.S. every year. 250,000 children and adults worldwide are also diagnosed yearly with some form of leukemia. This represents about 2.5% of all people diagnosed with cancer.
In the major junior golf events I play (two world junior golf championships with details below), the Gracious Life Foundation (GLF) and I are reaching out to you for help. You can pledge three or more dollars for every birdie I score or a one-time donation of any amount. Anything you can do for my efforts would be greatly appreciated.
Birdie for ALL (Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia) Sponsored by Gracious Life Foundation
All donations will benefit Dr. Gary Dahl’s cutting-edge leukemia research at Stanford University’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. Dr. Dahl is a world-renowned oncology expert and pediatrician in leukemia disease research and treatment in the Department of Hematology and Oncology.
All donations will go to Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital (LPCH) In support of Dr. Gary Dahl’s pediatric leukemia research
The Ping and Amy Chao Family Foundation will match funds for any donations made to Birdie For ALL.
Grace’s scores for the following world championships will be posted online daily, so it is easy to follow her results:
Day 14-16, July 17-19, Friday - Sunday: MMK Last Day, Debriefing and Beijing EV Training
Week 3
Day 17-19, July 20-22, Monday - Wednesday: Trip to Suzhou
Day 20, July 23, Thursday: Class
Day 21-23, July 24-26, Friday-Sunday: Free Time to Work on Presentation and Journaling for Class
Friday (7/24) - Lunch was good today as we all talked about faith and economics and what it means to us. People became very vulnerable with each other and I was able to share some of my life experiences as well.
Saturday (7/25) - I'm sitting in Shangdao Cafe with my roommate Irene journaling about our experiences in Shanghai. It is part of our PESI CISP course to journal, reflect, and process our learnings in China. I finished my blog entries about my EV training experience, but I still have a long way to go for the journaling as I've been really busy with training, volunteering for mmk, and going to suzhou. Please forgive me for my delay in blogging and keeping you updated.
Sunday (7/26) -
Week 4
Day 24, July 27, Monday
Day 25, July 28, Tuesday
Day 26, July 29, Wednesday
Day 27, July 30, Thursday
Day 28, July 31, Friday
Day 29, Aug 1, Saturday
Return to the US! =) Home Sweet Home!! =D Bye Shanghai!
July 18-19, Saturday-Sunday, EV Training for Beida and Tsinghua
Saturday morning, Luke, Rebecca, and Vivian flew in from Beijing. We had lunch and talked about where they were from, their interests, etc. After a 30 minute rest, I went into EV Training. They asked really good questions and were all really interested. They signed up for EV. We went to dinner and afterwards, met up with Ketty and Alex, to brainstorm ideas and set some concrete goals such as site translation into simplified chinese and spreading the word to nonprofits and foundations in their area. Luke asked a good question which is what is the goal for EV in the next two years. I drew a timeline and said that we are focusing on quality of users in the first year up until May 2010, then afterwards we would like to go viral. After Ketty and Alex left around 9pm, the Beijing Team and I were hard at work to translate all EV training material (powerpoint and videos) into Chinese. They are excellent translators as well as video dubbers. Rebecca and Luke had very clear voices. We ended up sleeping around 4am. At 9:30am, we met up with Ketty and Alex in my room and recorded chinese interviews for the East Villager videos. Around 12pm, the girls from the Beijing team left and Luke and I spoke to Mr. Chao to catch Mr. Chao up with updates and then Luke finally left around 2pm. I really enjoyed working with this team and hope that they'll will be excellent trainers for EV in Beijing.
July 22, Wednesday, 2nd Meeting with Fudan and Jiaotong Tiger Team to Touch Base and Plan
We caught up over dinner with how everyone's summer's going. After dinner, we came back to my hotel room to watch the EV Videos in Chinese. Everyone loved the dubbing as I think having them in Chinese made it a lot more fun and relatable to the students. Afterwards, I had Ketty practice going through the Chinese EV Powerpoint Presentation to show the rest of the group how it's done and she did really well. Alex helped with catching the rest of the group up with the translation effort and split the phrases among the group. Their goal is to have the translation done by September 1st before school starts so they can start training when students return to school. The Shanghai Team were really thankful for EV training and the efforts of Ping and Amy. They are really excited to help out in any way they can. I'm looking forward to working with them.
July 10, Friday, EV Tiger Team Jiaoda Fudan Meeting
I met up with students who were interested in the Development Support Team for East Villagers. These were really passionate students from Jiaotong and Fudan. Here are some of their thoughts on video about East Villagers after hearing my presentation.
July 11, Saturday, East Villagers Overview for Fudan, Jiaotong, and PESI
The EV Overview went really well even though I had never spoken to an audience of differing english levels before. My goal was to be as clear as possible and speak to the audience's needs in the time allotted (45 minutes). I really wanted to make my time with them worthwhile. I alternated videos with screenshots and demo. I could tell that American and Chinese students were both interested in East Villagers. Many came up to me afterwards and told me that they really enjoyed the presentation and can't wait to "see me online." Thank you PESI and TECC for giving me a chance to share about EV.
July 11, Saturday, Four Training Sessions for JiaoDa Teams
I had four 1 hour and 15 minutes sessions with Jiaoda Teams. There was a 15 minute lag in between to set up and get the internet working. Some computer's wireless cards worked better than others. Students were really responsive and fast learners because EV is similar to Xiaonei and Facebook, but the slow internet was a hurdle for them to fill out their profile completely and test out the blog feature so they can blog for MMK. I was able to teach 1-2 students who were done early how to import videos from Tudou to EV. It is a very simple process that takes less than 5 minutes (including the time it takes to upload a video). Tudou uploads videos really fast here in China, and Youtube and Facebook does not work in China. Here are some photos from the training:
July 13, Monday, Four Training Sessions for Fudan Teams
I had two hours with each of the Fudan Teams. I enjoyed working with all of the teams so far. They are very patient with the slow internet, opening more than one window to allow time for each of the features to load. With two of the groups, we were able to learn about how to import videos from Tudou. I taught them how to make Tudou accounts. We were able to upload and import 10 videos on team members thoughts before MMK. All were able to test out blogs and introduce themselves to the community. I didn't have time to take many photos during these sessions. Here is the first group:
July 13, Monday, Training Session for FELP Team
The students from the Fudan Elite Program were already very acquainted with the web and Wei Han, the leader, had already been testing out the site. I helped him with questions that he had, did a presentation, and had the other members sign up for EV. They did not have any problems and were really quick with the features. We ended up finishing 30 minutes earlier than planned. FELP has been using EV for their various projects.
Thank you to my helpers: Ketty, Alex, Yang Yang, Wang Li, and many more!
There are more than 3 million migrant workers in Shanghai, who help the development of the city while without a citizenship. Most of them treasure the more advanced educational method in the big city as compared with their hometown and bring their children to attend schools in Shanghai. This is how schools for migrant kids who are less advantaged than their shanghainese peers spring up. MMK（More for Migrant Kids）is the specialty of TECC, Shanghai. MMK is working on the Education for migrant kids, most of which come from families of migrant workers and are relatively less educated as compared with local peers. MMK volunteers give migrant kids extra-curricular lessons of various forms, helping those underprivileged kids achieve an overall development.This year(2008), PESI works in cooperation with TECC,Shanghai to hold a week-long summer camp with migrant kids and volunteers from China and the U.S. in an attempt to stage volunteers to communicate, organize and lead within teamwork and to arouse the social responsibility from young people for the underprivileged. Meanwhile, volunteers are work to encourage the migrant kids to be confident and independent so they can make their live a better one.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009, Shanghai -- This morning I met with YangYang, one of the leaders of TECC Fudan, and we visited a few possible locations to hold the EV training for this weekend. This took from 9am-2pm. After testing out the internet connection and convenience of location, we finally decided on a location which is the Fudan Cafe Bar which has wireless given that we provide 10-12 laptops and login accounts. This location is fairly cheap and discounted for students of Fudan. On July 11, I will be holding four EV training sessions for Jiaotong University students (around 50). On July 13, I will hold four more EV training sessions for Fudan University students (around 50).
YangYang and I tested out East Villagers and it worked fairly fast on the wireless connection at Fudan University. He was concerned that since students could not use Youtube in Shanghai to post their project videos but I reassured him by showing him that East Villagers can support any type of video site including Tudou.com which is China's equivalent of Youtube. Also, he had a few good ideas for EV which we will implement in future updates.
Today, I had a call from TSI Jiangxi which includes students from Beijing University, Tsinghua, Jiaotong, Fudan, Hong Kong, and others. I will meet someone in 20 minutes to go off to my first training. This is my first update about EV Training in Shanghai. I'm really excited to see this platform serve as an aid to nonprofits in China. YangYang told me that this is a foreign concept for students to use the web to connect with each other to do non-profit. I will keep updating about the responses of students from China and what we can do to best serve their needs.
Thursday, July 9, 2009, Shanghai -- Yesterday's training went really well. It was my first training session and the students were very engaged in learning about East Villagers, asked many good questions, and gave good feedback. I really like the TSI Jiangxi group and was able to make some friends.
During the afternoon, TECC Leaders, Dan, Jen, and I had a meeting to plan out the training schedule on July 11. I will be giving an Overview of East Villagers on July 11 for 45 minutes. Then in the afternoon, will be training 4 JiaoTong teams (9-12 people). On Monday July 13, I will training four more teams from Fudan (8-10 people). I've also contacted Beijing students and we will have a few come to be trained to be EV experts in Beijing. Things are coming along well and I'm excited to see more response and reactions to East Villagers.
I am in Shanghai right now on the China Intercultural Studies Program from July 3rd to August 1st, 2009. While I'm here I will try to engage the chinese students to use East Villagers. I will try my best to update this blog entry with snapshots of my day here. At the end of the program, I will write another entry with a summary of my overall experience. Enjoy!
Day 1, July 4, Saturday
I arrived safely after a 14 hour flight. I had allergies right before I departed LAX and had my temperature checked before entering Shanghai. It was a good thing I did not get quarantined. I met Joanna and Kortney at LAX and we all went to Shanghai together. We all arrived at the hotel near Fudan around 10pm and were very exhausted. We were the last ones to arrive due to our flight being delayed. The weather in Shanghai at around 10pm was slightly humid but not too bad. My roommates' name is Irene and we get along really well. We both had a good night's sleep and woke up early in the morning around 6am.
Day 2, July 5, Sunday
Today was a long day full of very meaningful events. From the morning, we had orientation to go over logistics, goals, and program schedule. We met with PESI alumni and they shared about their work in Shanghai. We got to eat dinner with the professionals and had a chance to ask them questions. Then we went sightseeing at Jin Mao Tower, and I got to take pictures of all the skyscrapers at night. The buildings and city lights overwhelmed me and I wonder how the people in Shanghai feel about the rapid change. Dan, our director, told us that 15 years ago the area was rural farmland. All in all, today was very tiring but good to have an overview of the program and get to know my teammates more. I'm going to sign off to sleep now - 10pm Shanghai time - we need to wake up at 6am tomorrow and class starts at 8:30am.
Day 3, July 6, Monday
The humid weather is still gripping onto my clothes and skin but I am getting used to it. I am still not over jetlag and wake up everyday around 5am. Right now it is 8:20pm and I feel like I want to go to sleep. Hopefully, I'll be over it soon. We had our course orientation today at Fudan University. We saw a few movies to become more acquainted with Chinese history and background before diving into the course topic of china international relations and economics. I have never taken a class on this topic before so I'm interested in learning more about this area. After class, around 3:30pm, we heard thunderstorms and rained. I had a good conversation with my roommate today about reasons why we are in China. I think I'm going to rest now. Until the next entry...
Day 4, July 7, Tuesday
Today's weather was so much nicer than any other day I've been in Shanghai. I woke up eating two red bean buns and a little cup of yogurt for breakfast. We watched a movie about China and Shanghai today and I learned so much. After a wonderful lunch with the girls in my group, we returned to class to listen to Professor Ni's lecture. It was very interesting to hear a Chinese professor's perspective on the topic "China and the World." His talk was very interesting and english was very clear. After class, I met up with an old friend from Stanford and we explored the city of Shanghai. It was so good to finally catch up after two years. I really enjoyed today because of everything I learned, having the opportunity to catch up with my friend, and the wonderful weather (no rain).
Day 5&6, July 8-9, Wednesday and Thursday
I want to combine my blog for these two dates because on Wednesday I was taking care of logistics all morning and during the afternoon, I was holding a training session until night time. Today (Thursday) was great because I got to come to lecture again and I really enjoy learning about China from a Chinese professor's viewpoint. I've taken similar courses taught by American professors, and this opportunity gives me a more well-rounded perspective on China. In the afternoon, a guest speaker talked about her company which involves yak milk and fur and how she's able to carry out her idea into a company. Afterwards, I met up with a few TECC and PESI leaders to discuss the schedule for July 11 (Saturday) training session for the More for Migrant Kids Summer Camp. It seems to be falling together and I'm happy to see that. During the evening we had group debriefing where we're able to share about our experience thus far for the first week and Dan, our director, shared some very insightful material about cross-cultural relationships and how acceptance is so important which involves patience, humility, respect, and much more in our actions with not only people in China but people in general to show that we love and value them as a human. He went through a few articles and pointed out some insightful observations about American culture which involves impatience and a high value for efficiency and directness whereas Chinese culture may be different. My days have been pretty eventful and I'm glad to be sharing that I'm learning a lot. I'm grateful to finally get over my cold so soon.
Day 7-9, July 10-12, Friday Saturday Sunday
These few days were devoted to East Villagers Training and presenting about East Villagers for around 100 Chinese and American students. Check out my blog about EV Training in Shanghai Week 1 for more details.
