SOS Social Centres in China

SOS Social Centre Tianjin

The village held both of the 36th and 38th SOS mother’s training in the SOS Social Centre this year.

There were 60 SOS mothers from 10 SOS Children's Villages to take part in the training courses.

Meanwhile, National Village Directors’ Training was also held at the SOS Social Centre at the SOS Children's Village Tianjin this year.

The children's village fully uses the well-equipped centre to serve SOS children and community residents, which provide wider space for SOS Mothers and children to communicate well with the residents of the community.

This year, the centre has offered medical consultation for about 60 residents of the community, and taken physical examination for 22 women from the poor families. It also holds various kinds of activities for the community, such as Community Culture Activity, Old People’s Show, and Celebrations, which is about 9 times and 1,500 people attended. There are about 40 SOS children attending the chorus and dancing classes for free.  

The centre has received the donated activities 30 times, about 2000 people.

SOS Vocational Technical College in Qiqihar

With the strong support of the SOS Children and departments of civil affairs at all levels as well as Qiqihar University, in the year of 2008, the College in North Eastern China continues to thoroughly implement such guiding ideology of running school, namely, we insist on the employment-oriented and the market-driven highlighting the cultivation of talents’ vocational skills in combination with the needs of market; serving society is the purpose.

In accordance with the work deployment of the beginning of the year, we persist in the scientific outlooks on development and talent and education; in accordance with the laws of higher vocational education, we integrate and optimize educational resources of the College, improve talent-training mechanism, and create a harmonious atmosphere for training talents. In order to foster qualified high-skilled talents, we fully mobilize the enthusiasm of all the teaching and administrative staff; we develop the work in solid and effective and creative manner. With the concerted efforts we’ve basically completed the work-plan objectives made at the beginning of the year. Now the report is as follows:

The College possesses the existing 1899 students, of which 697 are boys and 1201 girls, with a student from the SOS Children's Village. In 2008, we’ve recruited 618 college students, 631 graduated, and 35 been admitted to undergraduate colleges.

The college teaching system includes the Department of Information and Machinery and Power-Generating Technology, of Accounting and Trade, of Art and Design, and of Chemical Technology; Experiment Centre. The current undergraduate majors of applied technology: Computer Science and Technology, Financial Management, and Marketing. The 11 majors of higher vocational education: Mechanical and Electrical Integration, Secretarial, International Business, Tourism and Hotel Management, Accounting, Marketing, Visual Communication Art and Design, Applied Chemical Technology, Analysis and Test Technology, Applied English, and Business English. There are 66 full-time teachers, of whom, 23 have obtained master's degrees, and 13 are working on in-service-study for master's degrees. As to the titles, associate professors account for more than 53% of the total number of teachers, of which Professors 4.

In the past year, the College has been adhering to the policy of “the service as purpose and the employment as orientation”. We actively explore the laws of talent cultivation in terms of the education of applied technology and the vocational education. In addition, the talent-training is experiencing the shifts of planned cultivation to market –driven one, closed education to open one, and traditional education of entering higher schools to the employment-oriented. The emphasis is put on teaching practice and production; technical services are in combination with social services. And we actively carry out the training model of orders-style; meanwhile we strengthen the vocational guidance and entrepreneurship education and initially set up the student employment channels and networks. Despite the financial crisis, the employment rate of students in 2008 is still nearly 70%.

We are strengthening the construction of training bases and raising the running school standard.  On the basis of the consolidation of the existing practice base, we’ve opened up and established new training and employment bases. They are Xinhai Hotel under the General Administration of Beijing Customs, the Hulunbeir East Energy and Chemical Co. Ltd., Hulunbeier Jinxin Chemical Co. Ltd., Daqing Zhifei Biological Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Jiangsu Jacques Technology Co. Ltd., Jiangsu Yongtaifeng Chemical Co. Ltd., Harbin KeRun Biopharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Xinjiang Bazhou Ternary Oil Additives Co. Ltd., Heilongjiang Chemical Group Co. Ltd,etc. Relatively stable practice bases of the existing school-enterprise cooperation reach nearly 40. 

In order to improve the quality of teaching, the College has focused on the teaching construction. For one thing, we’ve strengthened the work of teaching supervision and quality management. Steering Group members of the current semester have a total of 11 and they’ve attended classes 54 person-times. For another, we’ve reinforced the work of cultivation and management for young teachers. To promote their development, we have done these: fulfilling the training-work plans; asking each to make a three-year personal development plan; implementing mentoring system and listing assessment items. For the young 12 teachers we have conducted real-time evaluations. The third is reinforcing the inspection of the implementation of practical work. The college has developed a document called "Management Prescriptions for Student Post Practice (Trial)". Through monitoring the entire process of the practical work, we have guaranteed the practice quality of students. The fourth, revising the undergraduate programme of talents training.

According to actual needs, we put forth "Guiding Suggestions on the 2008 Amendments to Training Programme of Higher Vocational Talents" and continued to revise and improve the training programmes for the applied undergraduate and higher vocational education. In revising, we highlighted the characteristics of talents training in applied technology, the standards of public classes, and the scientific proportion of class hours of theory and practice. The fifth, actively carrying out vocational skills identification. We have promoted and completed relevant majors’ vocational skills identification training and assessment. The training contents conducted in this semester include: 57 people are chemical craft experimental mechanics; 30 chemical test mechanics, 14 decorative art designing; 120 receiving graphics training.

We have launched external training more than 1,500 people. We take teaching and research offices as units, and fully co-ordinate and mobilise the initiative of every aspect, advocate teamwork and expand horizontal joint of organisations, and promote academic exchange and integration between different subjects. By doing this, we have encouraged and supported young teachers to perform research work and further promote their growth. In addition, teachers have positively participated in projects of school and provincial levels, of which one project, administrated by provincial Bureau of Education, has been successfully applied for, and one project by City Science Committee. Besides these, 9 textbooks were compiled, 26 theses were issued, and four provincial-level projects were completed. 

In constructing the harmonious college, we have made every effort to expand and increase scholarships, grant-in-aids and subsidies to needy students. In the past year, we have offered the payment of SOS Scholarships, National Motivational Scholarships, National Scholarships, Qiqihar University Scholarships, the State grant-in-aids, and subsidies to needy students. By doing this, the students are motivated and needy students’ studies get successfully guaranteed. 

Actively carrying out cultural activities on campus, and creating a healthy cultural atmosphere. We have earnestly organised activities of all kinds carrying forward the theme and catering for the characteristics of young students. The Special attention is drawn upon creativeness and quality improvement in the content and form of activities. We have succeeded in holding the campus culture and art activity, science and technology festival, lectures on employment knowledge, campus hosts competition, Campus Ten Excellent singers contest, in-room decoration and design competition, dormitory net design contest, tug-of-war contests, basketball competitions, debate competitions, diversified chess games, and big Literary and artistic shows for greeting new students and sending off graduates. By doing these, the cultural life of students on campus has been enriched, the sentiment molded, the multifaceted quality improved, and the ability exercised. 

We are active in organising social practice and youth volunteers’ activities, developing students’ sense of social responsibilities and the awareness of service to the community, and exercising and improving their overall quality. Since the introduction of "Youth Volunteers" activities, we see the growing number of youth volunteers who have registered. Now we have more than 800 young volunteers, who are active in community service and gain praises from all aspects of society. 

At present, the college continues to offer them loving care in life and learning in every possible way, for instance, we often go into their daily lives and exchange ideas with them. And thus, it is realised that they can truly live in the society of University. In studies we have been encouraging them to study harder and actively take part in various activities organised by colleges and even university. This year three students from the SOS Children's Village have achieved greater progress and they‘ve got ready to meet smooth graduation and employment in July.

With the New Year’s coming, we are determined to work harder with enough confidence and enthusiasm for the purpose of producing more talents with more skills and more talents adapting to social work.

SOS Training Centre in Chengdu

We hold two SOS Mothers’ Training Programmes for 52 trainees in 2008 at Chengdu, one in April and the other in October. As one of the two national training centres for SOS Mothers and Aunts, over 500 person times of trainees has joined 20 Training Programmes since its opening in 1999. Our Training Programme includes lectures and discussions on Children’s Right Protection, Psychology, Education, Family Management, Cooking and etc.

The trainings not only benefit trainees on the improvement of educational skills but also offer good opportunities for SOS Mothers to make friends and exchange experiences in their work.