Fulfilling Pao School’s mission through social projects

In order to raise societal awareness of autism, Pao School established the Founder’s Challenge swimming competition in 2013. Held annually, the event embraces the theme “Swim for Love”. The Starwalker Swim Team, an organisation that provides autistic children with the opportunity to swim, joins the school for the activity – allowing the children to interact with their peers and pursue their athletic dreams. At the same time, the event raises funds used to support swimming training for autistic children. Over the years, Swim for Love has blossomed into one of Pao School’s best-known traditional charity activities.

In China, children with autism cannot typically access services at public swimming pools. This is why the Swim for Love event is so important; it gives them an opportunity they would not otherwise have. Pao School hopes that the activity leaves the children with fond memories. It also is a valuable experience for teachers, students and parents, who swim long distance alongside the children each year to challenge their personal swimming records.

Swim for Love was jointly initiated by Pao School teachers and students, receiving full support from founder Philip Sohmen. The students received encouragement throughout the entire process, from the planning and execution of the event, to the design of swimming caps and sportswear. However, their own stellar efforts have been instrumental to the great success of Swim for Love, and because of that they better understand the school’s core value of compassion.  Additionally, due to the success of Swim for Love, society pays greater attention to the challenges faced by autistic people, and provides them with more understanding, love and care.

The Pao School community brings together a group of caring and socially responsible families and, as such, has inspired the organisation of many charity activities. One of the most representative is the View From the Peak (VFTP) project. Launched in 2013 by five groups of Pao School families, VFTP originally sought to provide support for children in the remote Daba Mountains (Sichuan). In addition, the project helps Pao students develop empathy for others and awareness of the wider world. Later, more and more families joined the initiative, inspired by the children's strong sense of social responsibility. To date, VFTP has provided funding to 77 students in impoverished mountainous areas of China.

First trip to Daba Mountains in 2013

The ties formed between the Pao School families and the children of the Daba Mountains are enduring. Although many of the families have left Shanghai for work and study purposes, every summer vacation they still take time to fly to the Daba Mountains to visit the children – no matter where they are in the world at the time. This allows the VFTP team to stay informed about the challenges the school faces, which they discuss with the school’s management and teachers in order to arrange funding accordingly.

Since the pandemic began, support for teaching activities has temporarily paused, but the scholarship programme established in 2017 is going strong. Indeed, VFTP’s support for children and teachers in Daba Mountain communities has never stopped. The target scholarship recipients are students with excellent grades but whose families are impoverished. Furthermore, awards for excellent teaching and subsidies for teachers have been established to tackle the problem of teaching quality consistency and reduce teacher turnover. Finally, to boost students' enthusiasm for reading, a reading star award has been established.

Every summer vacation, parents and students work diligently for eight hours a day, providing instruction to the children of the Daba Mountains. Reflecting on her experience with VFTP, founding parent Joan says that bringing Pao School’s unique culture into the remote mountain communities is the aspect of the experience she finds the most meaningful. In the summer of 2017, members of VFTP organised a three-day summer camp for local children, introducing students there to Pao School’s culture. Parents divided the participants into Xueyuan groups – one each for spring, summer, autumn, and winter – per the system at Pao School. Pao School students also helped introduce the English language to local students at an English summer camp, providing many of them with their first exposure to English. This experience opened the students’ eyes to an international perspective.

The members of the VFTP project hope to support the children of Daba Mountains both financially and emotionally. The VFTP team was shocked by what they discovered the first time they visited the children: a school with no walls, and children holding their heads low, unwilling to speak.

"At that time, we felt that what children need most is support and care, the strength and motivation to help them come out of their shells." Joan says. As a result, the VFTP team focused on sports, art, music and science in the course material they taught to the children.

Over time, the VFTP team found that the local children became increasingly active, outgoing and happy, showing that the team’s efforts were worthwhile. For Pao School students, each visit to the Daba Mountains serves as an important lesson in understanding society outside the classroom and how to be socially responsible. Many Pao students who have participated in VFTP have become more empathetic and better able to understand others’ feelings.

Pao School students giving English and handicraft lessons to the children of the Daba Mountains

This year, VFTP members were especially pleased to learn that a student funded by one of the initiative’s scholarships was accepted to the university he sought to attend. Touchingly, the student sent a letter of thanks to the VFTP team. The letter expressed his appreciation to the team for the support they provided him and positive influence they exerted on his personal growth.

The thank-you letter encapsulated the meaning of the name “View From the Peak”: looking into the distance from the primary school in the Daba Mountains, exceeding the limitations life imposes, seeing a bright future beyond the horizon, and feeling a sense of tremendous hope and gratitude.

The student, Mo, wrote: “It is your selfless dedication that has inspired every student, and your great love that teaches us how to treat others with empathy. Such teachings will benefit us for life! Having benefited so greatly from your teachings, we in turn will pass on our learnings to the next generation, and do our utmost for the people, society and nation!”  

In 2020, China won a decisive victory in the fight against poverty, and the pace of rural revitalisation and common prosperity has continued steadily. Grace (Y12) is doing her own part to contribute to this important cause.

Grace joined Pao School in Year 6, as she was attracted to the school’s many co-curricular activities and student clubs. In her six years at the school, Grace has grown from a shy and restless person into someone who is confident, interesting, tolerant and determined. With a family background from the countryside, Grace is particularly concerned about rural revitalisation and poverty alleviation. “My work for equal opportunity and efforts to help the disadvantaged have benefited greatly from the school’s support,” she says.

With this focus on rural revitalisation and poverty alleviation in mind, Grace became one of a very small number of high school students able to serve as intern researchers at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions in June. As part of the internship, she conducted a three-week study on China that included rural education research activities. Throughout the study, she helped conduct an in-depth analysis and research of more than 4,000 survey results. The problems targeted included rural children’s education and nutritional levels, as well as mental health. Later, in the hope of drawing society’s attention to these issues, she and several other team members completed a paper entitled: The Relationship Between Parents' Mental Health and Children's Growth.

Grace (bottom row, third from left) and the Stanford project team

It has been more than a decade since the popularisation of the slogan “Clear waters and green mountains are as valuable as mountains of gold and silver”. Since this time, the national policy of environmental protection has remained consistent. As such, Pao School has steadfastly adhered to the concept of Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse, in the hope of instilling an environmental consciousness in students. In addition, the Pao School community has organised many environmental protection projects, such as the cooperation with the Spoon-billed Sandpiper in China organisation.

The spoon-billed sandpiper is known as "the giant panda of birds.”  As its beak is shaped like a small spoon, bird aficionados affectionately call it the bird with its own "rice spoon.” In 2018, the spoon-billed sandpiper was listed as a critically endangered species, and is designated with the highest level of protection on China's National Key Protected Wildlife List.

Spoon-billed Sandpiper in China is a non-profit organisation founded by Pao parents. The group is dedicated to the protection of Yellow Sea shorebirds and their crucial migration stops along the East Asia-Australia flight route. In order to improve environmental awareness and broaden their understanding of nature, Pao students and parents have also participated in bird watching groups and visited the World Natural Heritage Site Tiaozini Wetland in Dongtai (Jiangsu Province) to observe the birds in their natural habitat.

The Tiaozini Wetland is an important habitat for the spoon-billed sandpiper, where visitors can observe these magnificent birds among the waves of the Yellow Sea. The Pao School Bird Watching Group have also spoken with experts from the World Wide Fund for Nature, sponsors of domestic and foreign bird conservation organisations, and researchers with more than a decade of experience in waterfowl surveys, to learn about the area’s unique natural landscape and marine culture.

In addition, Pao School continues to engage in a wide variety of activities to encourage social responsibility and give back to the community…

Pao School cooperated with the Special Olympics Games and invited disabled children to campus to play ball, read, and play games together.

This summer, the Wuding and Songjiang campuses donated more than 1,000 desks and chairs and 100 books to primary schools in improverished communities, including Kuibage Town Central Primary School and Yima Town Central Primary School in Xinjiang. Pao School hopes these modest efforts can make a difference in the education of children in those communities.

Year 12 Aina and Maggie sing for senior citizens in a nursing home visit

As part of character education at Pao School, students regularly visit nursing homes. These visits vivify the lives of the nursing home residents, showing the students’ willingness to help others and contribute to the happiness of the nation’s senior citizens. 

Pao School student led volunteer team Qixing planned and organised a public welfare activity for the disabled with the theme of "caring for special children and creating happy families together" in Gucun Park, Shanghai.

Since its foundation, Pao School has received generous support from both the school community and broader society. With the support of the Social Action Fund, it is hoped that more and more students will participate in activities that benefit society and further develop a sense of social responsibility.