It was a festive day for pupils of Shitou Primary School when
Volkswagen came to town.
Students of the school, who are from the Bai minority, dressed in traditional clothes
to welcome their first foreign teacher - who came to speak as part
of the automaker's "Green Class" program.
Ingrid Vahland, a German environmental advisor and wife of
Winfried Vahland, president and CEO of Volkswagen Group China
(VGC), said after the classes that she "felt at home with the
passionate but innocent children".
Bai minority students
present drawings on environmental topics to Winfried Vahland,
German environmental advisor and volunteer teacher of the Green
Class, and Molly Yang (left), director of corporate communications
at Volkswagen China.
She talked about "global warming and my life" from various
perspectives: climate and life, the consequences of global warming,
why global warming is happening, how global warming will change the
world and what we can do to slow it.
Her words encouraged students to discuss the measures they can
take themselves to help the environment.
It was Vahland's third time to join in the Green Class
initiative, but it's the first time for her to visit a school in a
poor rural area to talk about the environment.
Shitou Primary School in Yulong County in Lijiang of Southwest
China's Yunnan Province is nestled in the Laojun Mountains, where
the Nujiang River, Lancangjiang River and Jinshajiang River
converge.
It is known for its culture and beautiful landscape.
"Although the environmental issues in big cities are much more
urgent, we should not ignore children in rural regions, especially
in protected nature zones," says Vahland.
She says she believes children will spread the know-how they
learned in class to their parents, friends and neighborhood. "It's
necessary to protect the environment before we destroy it. We are
now on a right path."
The Green Class is a part of the German auto conglomerate's
Green Future Environmental Education Initiative organized in
conjunction with China's State Environmental Protection
Administration's (SEPA) communication and education center.
The program will run for three years and aims to further raise
awareness in children about environmental protection and building
an eco-friendly and energy-conserving China.
It is part of a series of environmental programs by the auto
giant that also includes a competition for young journalists, an
energy-saving and emission reduction design competition and visits
between students at green schools in China and Germany.
"We promised to SEPA to invest at least 8 million yuan for the
three-year project. We have donated 2.5 million yuan this year and
plan to invest 4 million yuan next year," says Molly Yang, director
of corporate communications at VGC.
"We first give lessons to green schools, the result of the joint
efforts by SEPA and the Ministry of Education, about the
environmental protection successes of developed countries. VGC is
the first large multinational company to collaborate with the green
schools on a long-term basis," adds Yang.
The country now has over 34,000 green schools.
Different from the previous two Green Class tours in Beijing and
North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the two-day lecture
in Yunnan also provided environmental education to students in
Tai'an Middle School in Yulong County and professional training
sessions on environmental education to more than 200 outstanding
teachers at 100 green schools in the province, with the hope that
they will go on sew the seeds of environmental awareness among
their students and fellow teachers.
Associate professor Tian Qing from the environment education
center of Beijing Normal University shared with the teachers the
instruction methods used at primary and secondary schools.
Guo Geng, an environmental expert and senior engineer at Beijing
Biodiversity Conservation Research Center, also shared with the
teachers his experience in environmental education and had in-depth
discussions with them.
As the sole automotive partner of the Beijing 2008 Olympics, Volkswagen also
integrated Olympics elements into the green initiative by inviting
the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games women's table tennis singles champion
Chen Jing to meet and talk with students in the mountainous
area.
Sharing her own experience, the first Chinese champion in
women's table tennis singles in Olympics history encouraged
students to embrace the "faster, higher, stronger" Olympic spirit
in their daily lives when it comes to both studies and sport.
"We are discussing with the Beijing Organizing Committee for the
Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) about two torchbearer students
from green schools. We are also thinking about inviting some
students to Beijing to watch the Olympic Games," says Yang.
As the official auto partner of BOCOG, VGC will supply 5,800
environmentally friendly vehicles to the Olympics from its brand a
Volkswagen, Audi and Skoda.
This year, VGC announced a fuel and emissions strategy for the
future. By 2010, fuel consumption and emissions of all Volkswagen
cars produced in China will be reduced by 20 percent, the company
says.
(China Daily November 26, 2007)
