Social Responsibility
It takes every individual and every organization’s active participation to build a good society. Our association has provided people who have a heart for the community development with diversified opportunities to participate in the volunteer service and social governance.
1.Thalassemia aid and prevention promotion
Since Guangdong is a region with a high incidence of Thalassemia, the Guangzhou YMCA started its assistance for those affected in May 2008.In the past decade, we have achieved policy support through handing in proposal to the CPPCC, which helped the severely affected children to get up to 3,000 RMB of reimbursement for their treatment cost every month since August 2010. During 2009 to 2018, we also collected a donation of more than 1.3 million RMB to help conduct 2000 times treatment for the affected children.
With the launch of a pilot program to prevent and control Thalassemia in China in 2012, the birth rate of severely affected children in Guangdong has dropped significantly. But on the other side, the rate of gene carriers has increased from 1/9 to 1/6. Guangzhou YMCA thus started promoting the prevention campaign among young people in universities and enterprises, advocating healthy living habits and raising people’s awareness of the importance of pre-marital, prenatal and pregnancy check-up. Since 2018, an online charity run for zero Thalassemia was held each year, using the mobile apps and social media to deliver a new way of awareness promotion.
2.The Guangzhou Sports Meeting for the Exceptional Children
The Guangzhou Sports Meeting for the Exceptional Children, once called The Sports Meeting for Children with Disabilities, advocates that every child is entitled to enjoy the pleasure of physical activities. This project was launched by Guangzhou YMCA in 2004, and was brought to a new stage in 2010 when the 16th Asian Games was held in Guangzhou. It has been held 15 times by November, 2019, and has developed from a small activity involving 50 children with hearing impairment and 100 volunteers to a big event involving 400 children with different kinds of special needs and 1000 volunteers.
The sports meeting, except having been held twice in the Tianhe gymnasium, are usually held in schools. According to the physical condition of the participating children, we set up the programs of running, relay, broad jump, archery or soccer shooting. The children with similar physical conditions were grouped to ensure fair competition, and the play zone was set up to enhance the children’s interaction with their volunteer chaperone. The idea was brought into the community and in 2015 a mini version of the games was held in the Huangcun sub-district to promote an inclusive community for the children with special needs.
3.Social work service projects
Since September 2011, the Guangzhou YMCA has seized the opportunity of the government’s purchase of social work service projects to build a professional team of social workers. We have undertaken 4 comprehensive programs with a total fund of 31.8 million RMB and 32 featured service projects with a total fund of 8.752 million RMB. All the projects have passed the service quality and financial evaluation of the third-party experts with good performance, among which the comprehensive projects have been evaluated as excellent for 4 times and won 9 times level of excellence in the financial evaluation.
In 2016 and 2017, we cooperated with experts and scholars in psychology and sociology to jointly promote the upgrading of the drug rehabilitation service that has been delivered by Guangzhou YMCA for many years, and explored a new professional service model.