What is SRS Shanghai?
SRS aims to build relationships between migrant children and international school students in Shanghai, China, across age groups, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds through a simple model of one-on-one peer mentorship. Simply put:
Students Responding to Students!
Program vision
International student volunteers are partnered up with a migrant student "buddy" that they will have the opportunity to get to spend time with throughout the school year. This one-on-one mentoring affords students the opportunity to learn from one another through reading, sports, crafts, cross-cultural education, music, and community volunteering.
For the international school volunteers, emphasis is put on leadership, teaching, community service, and personal mentoring relationships with their buddies.
For the migrant school participants, focus is placed on encouraging self-confidence, instilling civic responsibility, academic empowerment, and one-on-one personal relationships with their mentors.
We hope that for both international and migrant children, the experiences they have as part of SRS will inspire them not only do well for themselves, but also to do good in thier communities. SRS strives to do this by promoting understanding between its members and instilling the spirit of volunteerism and service at a young age in order that it may last a lifetime.
Program time
The SRS program runs Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, from 5:00pm to 6:30pm in the Kites Drop-In Centre, in the neighbourhood of Xujing, Shanghai, and Tuesday, from 4:30pm to 5:30pm at the Xiu Long Migrant School in Qingpu, Shanghai.
Mini Library
SRS participants and volunteers spend time reading together everyday as part of the daily program, so it seemed only natural that the Kites Centre would have its own source of reading material! Starting out with an initial investment of 100 children’s books for a variety of reading levels, the SRS mini-library will also be a lasting bit of infrastructure that will enhance learning, and can be easily expanded according to available resources.
Children are encouraged to borrow books from the library to read with their buddies, and take home with them using our peer lending system. Each month, one pair of migrant student and international student buddies will assume the role of "SRS librarians".
