CTEF is operated by a group of dedicated volunteers. They are mostly full time employees that already facing a tough job balancing a busy life and highly pressured work. Still, they come together to work towards a greater goal to help the needed and give back to the society.
CTEF has a long tradition to closely monitor the school renovation project and visit the schools we have built in various developing stages. Wawisiu Law is one of our founding partners and longtime volunteer that leads our operation in China. In 2002, Waisiu and her daughter visited several schools in Qinghai and Yunnan within two weeks. Some of the schools had received funding from CTEF in the last two years, while others are potential recipients. They visited schools to confirm the schools constructions were in proper order and made sure the fund were used without discrepancy. They also brought the students some stationary and clothes donated by CTEF and other NGOs. More importantly they found many practical and important needs from students. For example, for many students in Ledu school, there was no heating stove at all in school dormitory. They also noticed that many students have no access to other books other than the minimum text book. These practical findings helped to inspire many new CTEF projects. Their work has brought major change to the schools and motivated many more volunteers to get involved, either by providing financial aid or provide local material and labor. Our local volunteer Yuan Zhanhai told us about Dennis’s recent one day trip in 2010 to visit Guizhou school and students. It is one typical CTEF school visit but special in a way. It is typical because the school is located in faraway rural area and it takes a long time and many different commuting tools just to get there-- long distance bus, local “taxi”, motorcycle or even ox-wagon. This time it took Dennis and his wife 5-6 hours just to reach the school and as usual they have to walk a long way on the muddy mountain road. It is different this time because Dennis and his wife had to visit several families after completing school activity at 9:00pm. The night in the mountain is chilly and dark. The road is narrow and steep with mountain on one side and cliff on the other. Without any flashlight, they have to “feel” the way slowly and crawl on the steep and narrow mountain road. They made it to the sponsored families after an hour to distribute scholarship and talk to the parents about students’ study progress. Zhanhai was deeply impressed by Dennis’s dedication and leadership. His respect ion to Dennis turned him into one of our longtime partner at local school.
Although CTEF is a Seattle based non-profit organization and most of volunteers are based in US, a significant part of our operation is in China, and we are counting on our hard working China local volunteers and many other NGO partners. We sincerely appreciate our local volunteers' work. Many of our projects are labor intensive, from "5.12 pen-pal project", to the 1+1 Student Sponsorship program and recently the Teacher Award program. Each stage in these projects requires our volunteer to send out initial survey form, contact every individual involved to explain and follow up. Our volunteer, Fang Fang, called each of the 150 students for 5.12 pen-pal project alone. Our volunteer then has to coordinated collection all the data. The 1+1 program is even more demanding with hundreds of students and matching up them with donors in the program. It is hard to realize a small step in such a project can mean so much work. We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude. Thank you, Fang Fang and many other local volunteers that help us to this date!
CTEF’s volunteers go beyond the Chinese community. Mr. Jannick B. Pedersen, Managing Partner at FranklinCovey nordic approach, is a Danish, one of many more volunteers caring the education in China. He started the student scholarship program (the former 1+1 program) with Michelle Zou to help needed high school and college students in China to complete education. He is now an advisor to CTEF on our strategic direction. Jannick flew from Denmark to Seattle visited CTEF volunteers in September 2010, helped us to formulate the third important element of the 1+1 program – help students grow wisdom through donors and volunteers interaction with students. Then in March 2011, Jannick visited Seattle again to give donors and volunteers the 7-Habits of Highly Effective People. Thank you, Jannick and many other international volunteers that devoted their talent, time and money to help CTEF grow!
CTEF is also indebted to many volunteers in our partner organizations. Wanping Huang is a volunteer from Warm 1+1. She has been working with CTEF for years and we are grateful to have local volunteers like her. She had helped us coordinate many school renovation projects, school visits, library, and winter clothing project. She started her volunteer work after serving as temporary teacher in Guizhou. Work full time as a “white collar” in city, she spends almost all her vacation time to visit schools. As she said, “To help the kids go to school brings a splendid rain bow to my life. To do this, I might have lost a lot but I received far more--The happiness in helping others, the beautiful scene on this journey, the friendship, the warming smile, and a true heart.”
