Summer camp for children from AIDS affected towns
- By Wu Jin
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E-mail China.org.cn, July 26, 2012
Many children from moderately wealthy families living in big cities view summer camp as a week-long routine that occurs every summer. They meet new people and listen to their camp counselors' directions.
But for some, summer camp is a-once-in-lifetime luxury that will shape their outlook and approach to life.
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Students and volunteers pose for a picture at the Olympic Park in Beijing on Monday, July 16, 2012. The students are from AIDS impacted families in Henan Province and are now in Beijing for a weeklong summer camp sponsored by Hong Kong’s Chi Heng Foundation. [Pang Li/China.org.cn] |
Hong Kong-based Chi Heng Foundation's Beijing summer camp represents the latter. It began Monday, July 16th, and has inspired the lives of 40 children from AIDS-affected villages in China's central Henan Province.
For many of the children, the opportunity to come to Beijing has opened a new chapter in their lives, giving them a taste of big city life, sights and sounds.
The first stop for the summer campers was at the Beijing National Stadium, commonly referred to as the 'bird's nest', which is now a mess of scaffolding, trucks and cranes following a recent concert. Despite the intermittent noises from the trucks and cranes, which were working to dismantle the scaffolding, the children's enthusiasm was infectious as they were told the rules for the first game they would be playing: exultant to see their first leg at the former Olympic site was celebrated with a popular treasure-scavenging game designed by Michael Wix from New Zealand.
Promising to give the winner of the game authentic imported candies, Wix soon cured the children of their inhibitions, and they soon became completely immersed in the game.
The game's rules included getting a stranger's signature, a photograph with a smiling police officer and finding a hidden object.
"We didn't finish many of the tasks," said Xiao Wei (alias), one of the young scavengers.
"When we were trying to invite a policeman to take a photo, he just refused," the boy said while sitting beside a big cup of iced Coke Cola and a Big Mac he had just gulped down, which was part of a free lunch treat from Wix to Xiao Wei and the rest of his 39 teammates. It was also their first time to sample food from McDonald's.
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