Since its establishment in 2017, the International Free Lunch Program has received donations from countless loving enterprises and individuals in China and abroad. The program has invested more than 10 million yuan in Africa and has had its influence felt in six African countries, including Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria and Malawi, with a total of 32 meals served and 7,663 beneficiaries.

If we are to say that the implementation of the International Free Lunch overseas encountered difficulties, we must mention the “language”. Fortunately, we have a group of excellent volunteers who take on the important task of “translation” – the schools regularly submit monthly reports in English, and the translation volunteers divide their work to translate the reports into Chinese, which will be used for fundraising on various public fundraising platforms of International Free Lunch. The monthly reports are used to publicize the progress and provide feedback to donors.

   This issue’s volunteer story comes from the International Free Lunch Translation Team. Henry, a 17-year-old senior, has been helping to form the team since January 2023, and so far there are more than 40 young translators from China and abroad, who support the program by using what they have learned outside of school hours.

First Person Narrative:

“The essence of learning is to practice”, after I became a volunteer translator, I have gained a deeper understanding of this saying. In my opinion, knowledge should be separated from books, and one must leave the comfort zone to search for their own unique value in the infinite world.

Since I was 6 years old, I began my “bilingual life”. My education throughout elementary school, middle school and high school have been inseparable from “bilingualism”, not only because I was learning content in two languages, but also because I approached the world with the perspectives of two different cultures.

In 2022, I met Mr. Deng Fei by chance. Mr. Deng Fei is a well-known investigative journalist and public servant. On April 2, 2011, he launched the Free Lunch Fund public fundraising program with 500 journalists, dozens of mainstream media in China, and the China Social Welfare Foundation, which has so far helped to solve the problem of hunger among countless children and provided a guarantee for rural children’s life and learning. I admire Mr. Deng Fei very much, and I hope that through my own ability, I can influence more people to raise money for rural children, hoping that they can live healthy and learn happily like us, so I chose to launch the “Tencent Donate Together”, and I insisted on donating my pocket money every month to support my peers, and I also convened a 12-monthly donation team! I have also gathered 12 monthly donation teams to act together.

Later, I learnt about the Free Lunch International program, which was suffering from the impact of the epidemic and the inherent difficulties in implementing the program – it was not easy to work together across multiple countries as there were language barriers between Chinese and foreigners. Free Lunch for Children was in dire need of a team of translators to ease the communication problems during the implementation process. After understanding the situation, I realized that my ability and resources could help to solve this difficulty and proposed to set up a translation team to help the project to better carry out the implementation work.

In January 2023, I called on middle and high school students with bilingual ability and willingness to become volunteers through different channels to form the “Bingo Translation Group “, and in February 2023, I and 30 other young volunteers from all over the country translated the monthly and yearly reports of the feeding schools in Africa into Chinese. From February 2023, I and 30 other volunteers from all over China translated the monthly and annual reports from the feeding schools in Africa into Chinese, and then the program staff sent them to the donors in China in time, so that they could know about the process of the program and the local situation.

Nowadays, there are more than 40 young interpreters from China and abroad in the Translation Team. Looking back on this volunteering journey, I see the hard work of each translator. We are proud to protect the healthy growth of our brothers and sisters in a foreign country in any way we can.

Being a bilingual student is not easy, and being able to respect the differences between two cultures is a valuable skill. Over the past year, through the International Free Lunch Program, my teammates and I have been able to utilize our unique values and put what we have learned into practice to produce results, which is what I understand to be the “essence of learning”.

In the future, I hope that our translation team can further contribute to the society with our unique values, and we look forward to linking more international public welfare projects, promoting the cooperation between Chinese and foreign public welfare with the two-way thinking of bilingual students.

——Henry