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A volunteer found meaning from his community service

By DewenLi  2020.5.16

      At the end of January, the novelcoronavirus epidemic broke out in Hubei province. Considering the coronavirusas highly infectious and dangerous, the Chinese government decided to suspendmost of the economic activities and appealed to people to stay at home. Followingthe call of the state, the local government banned most areas as soon aspossible and carried out strict inspection and adopted controlled measures forthe personnel in and out. These tasks involved high requirements for human andmaterial resources because there were many entrances people could come in and goout at random and all such entrances needed to guarded. Therefore, volunteersplayed an important role in the inspection works. My friend Li Jiaming was alsoone of the members in the volunteer family. 

      Jiaming Li, my 20-year-old good friend from childhood, was elected the presidentof the Association for Promotingthe Growth of College Students in my hometownShatou one year ago. This association is a public welfare organization and allthe members are college students. Every winter and summer vocation, membersdesign activities together and these activities are held under the leadershipof the Youth League Committee. Therefore, all members are very enthusiastic andfond of public welfare activities. Li, the president of this association, isnot an exception.

        Knowingthe needs of the community for volunteers, he signed up without hesitation. “Asa good youth in the new era, I think to be a volunteer is our responsibility,” heanswered the question from his family. Volunteers needed to constantly checkthe body temperature of every passer-by with temperature gun and registerinformation on him or her. They were divided into groups and rotated everyeight hours. During their working hour, they only had 1 hour to have meal orhave a break. In addition to standing all day and doing many complex works,they had to constantly face the high risk of infection. “We would get in touchwith many strangers face to face. We had no ways to know who were the potentialvirus carriers. We could only know who had shown symptoms,” Li said. Althoughvolunteers had already put on the mask, they still were likely to be infected bythe novelcoronavirus.

Jiaming Li was stopping the car. Photo by Jason.       

       He admitted thathis family disapproved of his decision to be a volunteer,“They thought doing those works was dangerous. The safest way was staying athome.” However, he was determined to participate in the volunteer works. He sharedhis decision with his family only after signing up so his family couldn’t stophim. During his volunteer time, he updated his family regularly about his workand his own safety. He explained to them that he felt meaningful working asvolunteer. Hard work paid off. Very soon, his family supported his volunteerwork and felt proud of him. “I really feel grateful to my family. Without theirsupport, I couldn’t persist in my works,”, Li said.

  Li was checking the passer-by's temperture. Photo by Jason.

       A a few months following the novel coronavirus outbroke, the epidemic situation hads beengreatly alleviated. Many places removed the ban people’s movement out of thecity and into it, gradually. And the volunteer community was eventuallydisbanded. Thinking back to the volunteer experience in the past few months, Lisaid he had learned a lot : “The hard work sharpened my mind. I have learnedhow to solve sudden problems on my own.” He said that he met all kinds ofstrangers and knew how to deal with them. “What made me the happies was that Iknew many people who love volunteer work as much as I do. And made friends withthem.” Finally, Li said he will continue to be a volunteer when the societyneeds him. He will do his best to contribute to the society.

Volunteer group photo. Photo by Jason.