Naperville Central senior Harvey Wang is known in the area for his success on the links with the Redhawk boys golf team. However, there is much more to his daily routine than hitting the driving range or working on his short game. Wang is also a teacher for a youth run nonprofit organization called Education for all Foundation, teaching English lessons over zoom to more than 500 rural students in China. Learn more in this Off the Field presented by Advantage Acura.
“It all started when we went on a volunteer trip to the remote province of somewhere in China so it’s in the North of China and the volunteer trip had nothing to with education.”
What went from an annual volunteer trip soon became a project to help make a difference by giving those students in China the education that will help them stride forward for their future learning. While visiting a Village in Ningxia (Ning-Zhuh) China, Harvey recognized that many of those kids needed some extra help.
“They did not really have an English teacher really and they did not have the resources to do that so you know we thought that being fluent and being mandarin and English and personally having lived in both countries we thought that we hold an advantage and we can really use our key to I guess it’s a blessing of being bilingual to help these students.”
The sessions have been taking place since 2018 with Wang teaching mainly English. But as time went on, he and many other volunteers were able to bring more subjects to the lesson plans.
“We only taught what we knew we taught off of word documents but even though we were really inexperienced were still high schoolers we saw that the kids really responded well and as the year went on they became more confident. We thought this was a really beneficial thing and we can actually make a difference in these students lives so we started expanding and it all went from there.”
While the teacher and his students continue all current gatherings through a screen, he has a plan that involves getting everyone out of the virtual classroom.
“We’re planning a trip to one of the villages to meet the students teach in person as well as meet the local teacher’s administrators and plan out further how we can help them.”
While the goal is give everyone the learning experience they need, Harvey Wang hopes that he can inspire others to take on challenges that help one another.
“It doesn’t matter what your age is how old you are or what your previous experience is just go out there see what you can do for your community and other communities and really be brave to step out there and explore your options and really just anyone can make a change.”
Reporting for Naperville Sports Weekly, I’m Patrick Codo.
