August 14, 2022
Written by Stephanie Sun, Kai Zhou, and Nikki Raghavan
Edited by Stephanie Sun
As school ended for the 2021-2022 school year, our volunteers became eager to find even more opportunities to serve the community. We expanded our primary mission as an organization by providing one on one classes for students in China as a fundraiser. We also decided to expand our efforts to our local community by volunteering at food banks and picking up trash at parks and roads in our area.
Our 1-on-1 tutoring was created to give students a more tailored and personal language learning experience as well as to raise money for the organization. The classes were based on a discussion-based curriculum, and each student was assigned a specific teacher so that the teacher could personalize each lesson based on the student’s needs. To give students realistic practice speaking English, each class progressed by going over homework, catching up with each other, reading a story together, doing some practice, and playing games to wrap up. Through these private lessons, amazing progress was made; students quickly transitioned from simple picture books to fun, more advanced stories such as Cinderella and novels such as Harry Potter. Others delved deeper into subjects that interested them, such as the science behind natural disasters and the different music styles of the world. Each lesson was tailored to the student’s personal interests and areas that they wanted to improve on. The teachers worked tirelessly every week to coordinate schedules with the students and create new lesson material. Over the course of the summer, we had almost 40 classes and raised over $580.
In addition to our 1-on-1 tutoring, our volunteers also participated in local community service. At first we started small by cleaning up local roads. A team of our volunteers picked up trash and within 1 hour, we had picked up three full bags of trash. Seeing how much trash was on the roads of our community, we decided to take on something bigger, a main road in Johns Creek. This time, Macy’s Systems and Technology sponsored our efforts and helped expand our project with a much larger crew.
We also volunteered at Cross Pointe Church, helping package food, clothing, and other necessities. A team of volunteers visited Cross Pointe Church multiple times and helped with various tasks such as making food packages and putting together essentials for families in need. One of the tasks was to pick out fresh food from the spoiled food and help package the fresh food for families in need. We also had to organize donated clothes and essentials such as soaps, hygiene products, and more. At the end, the church distributed the packages of food, essentials, and other necessities to families in need. The event was also a great team building exercise as we got to help each other find better ways to finish the tasks more efficiently.
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