Over 150 volunteers, mostly foreign, were present yesterday, Saturday, 28 September, for the annual assembly of the From Compassion to Action (FCTA) international volunteer organisation in Nanjing.
Held in the offices of Jiangning Development Zone on Shengtai Lu, the assembly was attended by volunteers, other interested individuals and many an organization with whom FCTA cooperates, as well as some of the many charities to which the volunteers donate their time.
Since its inception in 2016, FCTA has been organising and cooperating in different volunteering and public welfare projects in Nanjing and other cities of Jiangsu Province and Anhui Province.
FCTA also cooperates with different local and international volunteering and public welfare organisations, such as AIESEC, Jiangsu Children Welfare Foundation, China Council of Lions, Junzi School for Disabled Children, Nanjing Dibole Volunteer Service Center, Anhui Orphanage and others.
Among its many projects, foreign volunteer teachers go to different migrant schools in Nanjing to teach the children for AIESEC’s Migrant Children We Care (MCWC) program, charity and fund-raising events to help with the educational expenses of poor children living in rural areas of Jiangsu and Anhui Provinces, helping in the construction of a new school building for disabled children and assisting with medical checkups for disabled senior citizens, as well as the creative Human4Human campaign that served hot water to 250 sweepers and police officers during the snowfall of late 2018.
Then there are the charity sales, campus tours for disabled children and the Global Food Culture Volunteer project that introduced different Pakistani cuisines to the students and volunteers of Junzi School for Disabled Children, all going to show that FCTA members are active to an almost unimaginable extent.
Yet, it was the sheer weight of numbers present at the assembly which left the biggest impression, and showed that FCTA does indeed have to hand sufficient a pool of foreign volunteers to serve in public welfare projects in and around the city of Nanjing.
Since its founding, over 350 volunteers have donated their time to FCTA in the delivery of its public welfare programs. Being mainly students, with the start of the new academic year, so too new blood for the organisation. Since school started alone, 292 new volunteer members joined the group, at time of writing.
Impressive numbers. By way of explanation, FCTA Founder, Ali Qadir, told The Nanjinger, “A big part of them have been volunteering back home in their high school life. But here it is not so easy to find those opportunities. So then people hear that there is this an organisation sharing in such opportunities and it is easy to join. This is like a big group of people”.
While the cutting edge of organisations such as FCTA will always be time spent by the volunteers in contact with the people they seek to assist, so there also are many who simply do not have the time available to be a part of such memory-making moments. Yet, volunteering is more than this. Also needed are designers, social media enthusiasts, drivers and people with experience of fundraising. Just sharing this story is a volunteer effort that makes a difference.
Those interested in becoming volunteer can reach out to FCTA via their official WeChat account (fcta2016).
