He Yongxi is a tall boy, a bit fat, with short hair and big smiling eyes. When we saw him the first time, he was helping the cook in school to distribute lunch to other classmates. He kept order just like an adult. He has impressed us from the beginning.
13-year-old Yongxi was a Primary Five student. He lived in a village of Yulong County in Yunnan Province with his father, mother and a younger sister. Since he had to walk for more than an hour from home to school, he chose to live in the school dormitory during weekdays.
Yongxi loves basketball. His school, however, could not provide a safe place for the children to play. He and his classmates could only play on the rough and muddy ground which was dusty and very near to the road. Even though it was dirty and dangerous to play there, Yongxi and his classmates still went for their basketball after dinner every night. "I like Michael Jordan. If we have a basketball court in our school, I can play as well as him." Yongxi said.
At that time, World Vision happened to carry out a "Child-Friendly Environmental Facilities Project" in Yongxi's school. It aimed to improve the living environment of the children through constructing recreational playgrounds or facilities where they could play safely. Children could also participate in the project to enhance their organizational capacity. Besides, World Vision also suggested setting up a safety team in Yongxi's school to maintain order of students during the construction period.
Yongxi felt very excited when he knew that a new basketball court would be built. He immediately signed up to become a member of the safety team. As Yongxi was enthusiastic and mature enough, both teachers and classmates nominated him as the team leader. With Yongxi's help to recruit more members to join, the safety team was finally formed.
In order to help the safety team organize activities efficiently, World Vision provided resources for them such as color cardboards, marker pens and even sleeves printed with the words "Safety Team". The students felt very happy when receiving these materials. Yongxi instructed his team members to keep these things in order, "We will take care of these materials just like our belongings."
Under the leadership of Yongxi, the safety team put forward their activity plan very quickly.
"We need to make some signposts, such as 'Dangerous! Please make a detour!' 'Child, treasure me please!' 'Keep off! Not dry yet!'
"After the construction, we will organize each class to clean the basketball court once a week by rotation. The new basketball court must be neat and tidy.
"We will tell our classmates not to play in the dangerous construction area and suggest them to play in other safe places after school."
The safety team could not wait for the construction of basketball court to start and make their signposts. Despite the pressure in arranging time schedule in the face of school examinations, Yongxi managed both things well at the same time, study for exam on the one hand and organizing for the safety team on the other.
When construction work began, the students also started their summer vacation and went back home. Yongxi however was not in the holiday mood. He would walk for an hour back school every few days to see how the construction progressed and whether there were children playing in any dangerous places.
The construction was finally completed as the new school year started. When we went back to Yongxi's school, we could see a neat and tidy basketball court. We could also see Yongxi wearing a red "Safety Team" sleeve. He was playing basketball with his classmates in the new court. A lot of children were playing around the court too. All of them were no more worried about the dust or the danger. They finally had a safe place to play. Joy and excitement on their faces were telling the tale.
Seeing us, Yongxi came over to greet us very warmly, "Thank you! We can play and run safely now and need not worry about the dust!" He wiped his sweat on his forehead, then hurrying back to the basketball court again.
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