Migrant Link Visits Haizhu: Success!

On Saturday 9 September at 1:30 pm, a group of 20 high school members of the Migrant Link community service group congregated at the Guangzhou World Trade Center, or the “Golden Lion” building, before heading to their first visit of the year. This school was in Haizhu, on the south side of Guangzhou.

Migrant Link is a community service group at AISG that meets on Thursday after school in Ms Erica’s room. The group works to support migrant families from other parts of China. The group has six annual visits to schools in Haizhu and Kaiping. This group is led by Queenie H and Soo Kyung H, both seniors. Soo Kyung expressed her thanks to “everyone who went to [the] Haizhu outing and made it a successful one!”

During the outing, group members played various games with the children including magnetic darts, throwing ping pong balls into cups, charades, and bottle cap flicking. The group then sang the song “感恩的心” with Chinese sign language. Following the song, the kids made thank you cards for their teachers with heart cards that were prepared in advance.

Although these children can only speak Mandarin, fluency in the language is not a requirement to join the group. However, there were only 2 participants with no Chinese experience, Sophia M and myself. Sophia M, a sophomore, describes her experience with the kids, “I thought it was sweet how [the children] tried to communicate with me,” but goes on to say that “it was very hard to feel useful,” and that not being able to understand what they were saying “kind of made [her] feel bad.” She still thinks it is a “good community service” but feels that “[she] would enjoy it more if she could speak Chinese.” This is her first year in Migrant Link and she plans to stay this year but is looking for new opportunities next year.

With Family Fun Day coming up and future events and outings already in the planning stage, new members are always encouraged to join. If you would like to join Migrant Link, email Queenie H at 06hsiaoq@aisgz.org or Soo Kyung H at 06hwangs@aisgz.org.