All 1.78 million Beijing students are being urged to register as volunteers. An individual's voluntary service record may be taken into account when considering applications to schools and colleges.

Beijing volunteers hold up Spring Festival couplets extending New Year greetings to the public on January 25, New Year's Eve according to the Chinese lunar calendar.

Growth in student volunteering 

Beijing education departments are working on a mechanism to encourage students to take part in voluntary work, hoping to capitalize on students' increased willingness to volunteer following the Sichuan earthquake.

There will be powerful incentives for students to take part. Schools and colleges will be allowed to consider voluntary services as part of their admissions process and the Communist Party will also take volunteer work into account when considering candidates for membership.

But the departments emphasized that an individual's right not to participate in volunteer programs would be respected.

Safeguards

Every student will be allowed to register as a volunteer but minors must get the approval of their parents or guardians.

There will also be safeguards to prevent organizations taking advantage of volunteers. Organizations will not be allowed to reclassify mandatory tasks as voluntary services and the difference between voluntary service and part-work, part-study systems will be clearly defined.

Spirit of volunteering

Wang Jingmei, vice president of Jingshan School, welcomed the move to encourage primary and middle school students to volunteer, saying, "Voluntary service will provide students an opportunity to get involved in society, broaden their outlook, cultivate their moral sense and improve their abilities."

"How we organize voluntary activities will determine the attitude of students and their parents," said Wang. "The biggest enemy of voluntary work is to turn it into a formalistic ritual; and fraud in evaluating voluntary activities is another serious problem. If these two aspects are strictly supervised, voluntary services will be supported by students and their parents."

Voluntary service wins points

Wu Zhonghua, secretary of the youth league committee of Beijing Wuzi University (BWU), said the university was planning to give points to students for each hour of voluntary service. The points will be recorded in special "moral education files" that BWU set up last year. The files are passed to potential employees after the students graduate.

"BWU is considering whether to take into account previous experience as volunteers when considering new student applications," said Wu.

(China.org.cn by Zhang Ming'ai, February 10, 2009)