China volunteering & tour by train

The beauty of this kind of travel is that you can still do all of the things you would do on a typical tourist holiday as you sit back, relax and enjoy the sites – whilst still making a valuable difference to people’s lives by volunteering during your stay at Xi’an.

Over the 15 day trip you will not only see the top tourist attractions, but you will get a chance to try your hand at a various community developments projects for a taster into the world of volunteering. There are different projects that you may volunteer at during your stay in Xi’an. These are the disabled person’s service centre, an orphanage and a centre for mentally disabled children, aimed at training the children and providing assistance to their parents. The disabled person’s service centre provides care for people of all ages suffering with physical and mental disabilities. There is also an orthopaedic technical service centre that is a division of this organisation.

The orphanage is a large, government run centre. There are currently 110 staff and 470 orphans. Since 1994 this orphanage has helped to re-home almost 300 orphans to both Chinese and foreign families. This orphanage looks after babies to children aged up to 16. Once the children turn 16 many start to work at the orphanage and look after younger children. The children that do not have special needs go to local schools during the day.

Finally the centre for disabled children was set up by parents whose children are mentally disabled. The organisation has helped 168 disabled children since 2001. There are 13 trained teachers, 2 social workers, 6 part-time workers and some volunteer groups.

Volunteers are needed at these projects to help care for the disadvantaged children. Although there are full time members of staff, they are over stretched and under-resourced so voluntary help is needed. You will get involved in a number of different volunteer activities during the trip. Your role will be to get as involved as possible, helping the local communities by educating and entertaining them. Your volunteering will only be for a week so it is paramount that you throw yourself into the project to gain the most out of the experience.

Finally, as this tour lasts for only 2 weeks, volunteers go into the project full of energy and enthusiasm. Consequently, a lot can be done is this short period of time and the local people can really benefit form this. Furthermore this a great taster for longer volunteering positions, with many of our volunteers going on to participate in longer placements helping making even more of a difference.