Reposted from the WeChat public account: 铺路石青少年发展中心 (Stepping Stones)
Stepping Stones’ programs depend on strong partnerships with a huge number of non-profit organisations, and this week we would like to profile one such partnership.
Shanghai Young Bakers (SYB) is a charity program providing free training in French bakery to marginalised Chinese youth aged 17 to 23, enabling them to find qualified jobs and lead independent lives after graduation. In order to help SYB’s students get internships and future jobs with international hotels and bakeries, Stepping Stones has been teaching oral English to SYB’s students since 2011, with a focus on kitchen and baking vocabulary.
Since Chinese New Year, SYB’s students have been unable to return to Shanghai for the second term of their one-year course, but our volunteers have made the best use of this period by continuing to teach English to them online. The online study period has also provided a new opportunity for us to engage with these lovely students: our Stepping Up computer teacher Teddy Shi has started to teach digital literacy to them online as well!
This is what students had to say about the classes:
“During the pandemic when students had to stay home, Stepping Stones’ team provided our students with online English classes. Even though Stepping Stones’ teachers were in different countries during this period, they always responded quickly to our needs and kept looking for content suitable for online English courses. They also developed a very practical course focused on understanding and using new digital tools. Not only did the students improve their English and digital skills, everyone became more confident.”
—— Wu Yan, SYB Social Educator
“Stepping Stones has been one of our key educational partners for a long time, supporting us in English classes and many other valuable activities. The training provided by Stepping Stones is very well received by our students and benefits our students a lot for their future development. Thanks to a partnership like this, we are able to realize our social mission to keep helping more disadvantaged youth.”
—— Liu Chenbo, SYB Program Director
We are proud of our long and fruitful partnership with SYB, and look forward to being back in the classroom with this year’s students for digital literacy as well as English lessons very soon!
