AXHU Community Work of Being Involved

2023 Fall | #3

AXHUers acting in 2023 summertime: 

A moment of changing, challenging and striving for Rural Rejuvenation 

From 10-20 Jul, 2023, the student organization of AXHU School of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, E-sparking Volunteer Services Group, had been engaged with its summer event & field trips at Xiaohuai Village, also “Ethnic Village” of ShiBaLi township, Qiaocheng district, Bozhou, Anhui province.

There, strolling in the community, paying home visits, building friendships and conversing with local residents (for their opinions, expectations and outlook), gracing the buildings and scenes with pen and colors, booming the “Beauty Village” construction out of their creativity and knowledge, fully featuring its “rural arts,” spatial values, Eco-economy..., which dynamically shapes a shining, appealing panorama of Xiaohuai icon (driven by China’s Rural Rejuvenation initiative).    

Wall Painting Art opening a new chapter at Xiaohuai   

Traditionally attributed to the regional ecological economy in growing herbal medicines, this coming-of-age pillar industry matters vigorously, and has yet been evolving along with the era’s transformation and challenges, aligned with the local farmers’ cultural feelings and critical understanding of a history of the folklore, to extend some civic outreaches of character to neighboring areas.

From around the venue, the panelists advance a blend of artistic forms in Wall Paintings Art and the theme publicity to practice orderly and coordinately. Decorating with an array of vivid, creative paintings and captions of conceptual values as well, the unnoticed rural life has been adorned with a quality of artistic artefact of being much broader. Thus, “One Wall, One Feature” showcasing with high-efficient and collaborative efforts of all participants, a sort of unique humanistic landscape of brilliance against the backdrop of Nature has been created in the rural areas, as well as everyone has an opportunity of “expanding knowledge, increasing ability, and contributing to community well-being” in a widely-welcome presence.

In the face of uneasy temperature in midsummer, those members toiled to transfer their rich imagination and expressive capacity onto the Wall Painting surfaces, via sketching [forming, texturing, lining, toning, coloring, polishing] some theme subjects with paintbrushes, palette and acrylic paint. Romantically, such a serene village appearing in artistic interpretation of what a different look of the new socialist countryside would be in the coming day.

The visual arts and design in Wall Painting has become the positive, cross-cultural “pollinator,” which is widely recognized by the local villagers.

Ideally, these young students do transform what they had learned in the study room into There-being to render the rural rejuvenation and the great renewal of the Chinese nation with their day-to-day actions. Seeing that, they feel happy to help the most, relieved in hard-earned intellectual experience on campus, and confident of what they will change, challenge and thrive in future, today.

“This is everlasting, beautiful memory on the wall!” says Din Jiali, a volunteer of being involved in this summer event, “Well, the ‘burning’ sunlight has ignited our passion to do something for the overall well-being. Albeit the outdoor hot temperature is very, very unfriendly to the body and the mind, we have re-framed ourselves to be really aware of the life values and friendships in Youth, standing in front of these hand-constructed works as a nexus”.

Youth’s efforts to better living conditions of indigenous people

As reported, since the structural poverty-relief work is projected at Xiaohuai village, its work committee has filed for each low income family (comprised of 239 farmers in 103 households, making up about 4.78% of the population). In 2016, the per capita net income of the farmers reached RMB 2,100 yuan, and its collective economy was however cut off at all levels, which was deeply folded into the nation-wide poverty-stricken villages.

As of 2020, with funding from the social protection system of “Two Welfare, Three Securities” [Food & Clothing and Compulsory Education, Basic Medical Care and Safe Housing], which sharply reduced to 137 farmers in 61 households via some concrete measures, such as education subsidy, medical insurance, social security, disability assistance, ‘photovoltaic’ poverty alleviation, rural dilapidated housing rehabilitation, financial poverty relief, rural land circulation, public-service jobs, and more.  

Under its official mandate to survey the root causes of the rural poverty, these two-paired student-investigators step up engagement in the community, visiting the targeted low-income groups, communicating with rural residents, and screening the small segments of poverty-stricken population that are “invisible,” documenting their real conditions, factual needs, hidden questions and problems, and any profound potentials to enter into a well-off life, helping them fix and maintain household facilities (e.g. plumbing and renovating), testing the QR Code Access, real-time e-record system, to make data and information (incl. questionnaire and popular science leaflets) of the household who have lifted out of poverty, such as re-employment status, family income and expenditure, health condition.

“Opening a world of possibility for poverty alleviation and rural rejuvenation,” a wider range of villagers expressed, “We are blessed with the state social protection policies and the social volunteers’ aids with care and understanding, we are rebuilding confidence and summoning courage in expanded ways, we are solemnly fighting to remove abject poverty, and we get ready to embrace a new prospect of rural rejuvenation.”

Today’s Xiaohuai community taking on a fresh outlook—a clean, serene, and livable eco-scape—and its residents’ lived experience and living conditions changing positively.   

The E-sparking Volunteer Services Group members swear with their actions in summer 2023, “AXHU youth are changing with social practices, challenging with lofty aspiration and responsibilities, and striving with the era’s great mission for the national rejuvenation and the people’s well-being on every front.”