In order to continue to deepen the educational exchanges between Shanghai and various international sister cities, enhance friendship and understanding between among people from all over the world, and make sure the “continuation of contact among sister cities despite the stopping of visits” and the “ continuation of friendship exchanges” under the new normal of global pandemic prevention and control, the “2021 Shanghai International Sister Cities Youth Camp”, organized by Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, undertaken by Education Bureau of Yangpu District, co-organized by Yangpu Education International Exchange Service Center, International Education Association Shanghai and No. 1 High School Affiliated to Tongji University was opened in No. 1 High School Affiliated to Tongji University on July 19, with other participants viewing in different places around the globe. Chen Qun, Deputy Mayor of Shanghai Municipal People's Government attended the event and announced the opening of the Camp. Huang Yongping, Deputy Secretary General of Shanghai Municipal People's Government, Xie Jiangang, Party Secretary of the Yangpu District Committee, Xue Kan, Deputy Party Secretary of the CPC Yangpu District Committee and Mayor of Yangpu District, Li Yongzhi, Deputy Director General of Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, Liu Guangyong, Deputy Director General of Foreign Affairs Office of the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government, Wang Hao, Deputy Mayor of Yangpu District and Jiang Haishan, President of International Education Association Shanghai attended the opening ceremony.
The “2021 Shanghai International Sister Cities Youth Camp” was held online for the first time this year from 18 to 31 July.It is also the the first practical exploration of the overall development of international educational exchanges in different districts through the model of “one district as the undertaker, multiple districts as coordinated partners”.
The event also invited a total of more than 100 representatives, including representatives from 12 foreign consulates and representative agencies of Finland, Egypt, Mexico, Russia, UK, Korea, Indonesia, Canada, Switzerland, UAE, Australia and Japan etc in Shanghai, as well as the education bureaus of Yangpu District, Huangpu District, Jing'an District, Pudong District, Xuhui District, Hongkou District, Putuo District and Minhang District and related middle school principals, teachers and volunteer students, to meet with more than 180 foreign campers from 19 sister cities in 17 countries, including Espoo of Finland, Liverpool of UK, Antwerp of Belgium, Budapes of Hungary, St. Petersburg of Russia, Chicago of USA, Montreal of Quebec province of Canada, Jalisco of Mexico, Rosario of Argentina, Alexandria of Egypt, Dubai of UAE, Yokohama of Japan, Nagasaki Prefecture of Japan, Busan of South Korea, Jeju Island of South Korea, Colombo of Sri Lanka, Chiang Mai Province of Thailand, Special Capital Region of Jakarta and Queensland of Australia to kick-start the great event for exchanges among youth from international sister cities online.
In 2020, the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has made the holding of International Sister Cities Youth Camp that year become impossible, However, since the outbreak of the pandemic, contacts between Shanghai and its sister cities have not been halted.
Another example is that Shanghai and Hamburg, Germany have sent more than 1,000 teachers and students for mutual exchanges since they twined with each other in 1986. However, the exchanges among teachers and students were stopped in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic. To respond positively, Department of Education of City of Hamburg, Germany has communicated with Shanghai Municipal Education Commission online and offline several times since the second half of last year and plans to work with relevant secondary schools in Shanghai in September this year to co-organize a Shanghai-Hamburg Twin City Online Activity with the theme of “City Map in Learning”. The Shanghai Municipal Education Commission was invited by the Hamburg Liaison Office China in May this year to participate in the “35th anniversary celebration of the Shanghai-Hamburg Sister Cities” and to review the historical achievements of the exchanges and cooperation between the two cities.
As another example, in order to enhance cooperation and exchanges with Dubai, Shanghai Municipal Education Commission and Dubai World Expo Bureau have held several discussions on educational cooperation for the “Expo 2020 Dubai” event. In March this year, Mr. Hashmi, Chief Technology Officer of Dubai Expo, wrote to Shanghai Municipal Education Commission to send New Year's greetings and express his desire to deepen educational cooperation with Shanghai. This year, 12 students and teachers from Dubai have been invited to participate in the 2021Shanghai International Sister Cities Youth Camp online. We hope that Dubai's young students will use this as a platform to deepen their understanding of Shanghai and people of Shanghai and feel the unique humanistic charm of Shanghai on the basis of communication with young people from all over the world.
Wang Hao indicated that as the organizer of this years’ Camp, Yangpu District welcomes young people from all over the world to actively participate in the friendly interaction. Yangpu District, as an “educational district” and a “strong district in terms of education”, will continue to improve its global vision and perspectives on education development and he expressed his hope that this innovative online camp could open new horizons for international cooperation and exchanges during the pandemic.
Harni Rinta-aho, Deputy Mayor of Espoo, Finland, Mohammed AL Hashmi, Chief Technology Officer of Expo 2020 Dubai, UAE, Shuzo Hirata, Minister of Education of Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan and Juan Carlos Flores Miramontes, Minister of Education of the State of Jalisco, Mexico, as governmental representatives of international sister cities, delivered speeches via video for the opening of the Camp.
Harni Rinta-aho, Deputy Mayor of Espoo, Finland said: “Before I became Deputy Mayor, I was the principal of a high school. I have been involved in organizing the visits for the international sister cities youth camps many times and have seen first-hand how our students are so excited before they leave for Shanghai and how much more excited they are when they return to Finland. I have heard many stories about how the Camp has helped them gain friendships and how it has inspired them to learn Chinese. There is a similar Finnish proverb ‘you are never too old to learn’, and I would strongly urge our children to take advantage of this opportunity to actively participate in the activities, communicate deeply, not be shy and try learning the culture and language of the world's oldest civilization.”
Mohammed AL Hashmi, Chief Technology Officer of Expo 2020 Dubai, UAE, praised the concept of “inclusion” of the International Sister Cities Youth Camp, saying that “The International Sister Cities Youth Camp provides a platform for students from around the world to meet new people, have meaningful exchanges and build friendships.People of the UAE cherish the humanistic value of 'inclusion' and have made it a founding principle of the country to promote peaceful coexistence and acceptance of people of different nationalities, identities and from different cultural backgrounds, which is highly in line with the spirit of the Camp. We also warmly welcome the participants of this year's Camp from all countries to participate in Expo 2020 Dubai with the theme of 'Bridging Ideas, Creating the Future' and share the fruits of human progress, culture, cooperation and exchanges.”
Shuzo Hirata, Minister of Education of Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, expressed his agreement with Shanghai Municipal Education Commission's online approach to the event this year, saying that “Nagasaki Prefecture has been twinned with Shanghai since 1996 and has been conducting various exchange activities with Shanghai. Since 2010, Nagasaki Prefecture has sent 62 students and teachers to participate in Shanghai International Sister Cities Youth Camp and is a strong supporter and beneficiary of this event. We sincerely hope that the campers can deepen their friendship through the activities and be the bridge to promote friendship between their city and the rest of the world in the future.”
Juan Carlos Flores Miramontes, Minister of Education of the State of Jalisco, Mexico, indicated the organizer of this year's online camp allowed the State of Jalisco to once again reflect on the 23 years of friendship and cooperation with Shanghai, saying that “I congratulate the 10 participating students of Jalisco who, through their individual achievements and knowledge-based competition, have won this valuable experience, as they will have the opportunity to learn the Chinese language, the mother tongue spoken by more than one billion people in the world. I also expect them to show to the youth of other countries, through their actions, how outstanding and excellent they are as students of Jalisco. I don't think the online approach in any way reduce the significance of the event and I look forward to this event getting better and newer as it goes on.”
Since 2009, “Shanghai International Sister Cities Youth Camp” has been held in Shanghai every year and has been successfully held for 11 years so far. It has received a total of 1,111 teachers and students from 38 international sister cities and regions in 35 countries and regions around the world, making it a beautiful name card to showcase the educational exchanges between Shanghai and its international sister cities. Foreign students and teachers from different continents come to Shanghai every year for two weeks in the summer to learn Chinese, experience Chinese culture, visit Shanghai universities and cultural facilities and ordinary families in Shanghai and feel the spirit of Shanghai City. More and more foreign students have become messengers of friendship between China and other foreign countries, who know China and are friends of China and who spread Chinese culture and tell Shanghai stories. In 2017, the Camp has been included in the key humanistic exchange program of Shanghai to promote national construction of “Belt and Road” Initiative and play the role of “bridgehead”. It has received more than 500 youth from 19 international sister cities in 18 countries and regions along the “Belt and Road”and played an active role in promoting people-to-people exchanges among young people along the “Belt and Road”.
The “2021 Shanghai International Sister Cities Youth Camp” was held online for the first time. The organizer of the event adheres to the new camping concept of fun-based teaching, interest-based learning, turning knowledge into action and movement-based playing and devotes itself to building an exclusive cloud platform for the Camp, empowered by information technology and data, building a database of Camp courses and activities and making full use of the online platform to showcase Shanghai's humanistic characteristics, traditional Chinese culture, Chinese language learning, youth exchange forums and other intuitive, vivid, interesting and enjoyable content of the Camp. Campers from different countries can sign in by real name every day from 16:00 to 19:00 (Beijing time) to participate in the live broadcast program prepared by the organizer for the campers. The campers are led by two Shanghai student hosts to learn Chinese with their Chinese teachers, to learn about the Chinese culture of “food, clothing, housing and transportation” and to try to speak Mandarin:“Xiaolongbao is delicious!” and learn to speak Shanghainese, such as: “Hello! Welcome to Shanghai! Xiaolongbao is so delicous! ”In addition to the language courses, campers can watch a wide variety of courses online and choose the appropriate course materials to experience and start doing DIY offline, such as drawing Chinese lotus flowers on Xuan paper, making Chinese fans and sewing scented bags during the painting or craft courses. Campers can also enjoy traditional Chinese art through thematic video resources such as “Virtual Tour of Shanghai”, “Virtual Tour of Universities in Shanghai”, “Families in Shanghai” and “Appreciation of Intangible Cultural Heritage Art” to taste traditional Chinese culture and appreciate the humanistic characteristics of Shanghai. After the daily study is finished, foreign campers and Chinese volunteer students will discuss and interact with each other through the online platform to exchange their feelings about the Camp activities.In this case, online and offline interaction as well as on-screen and off-screen communication have been achieved. It is understood that the resource library integrates video, audio, graphics and text, with rich materials and Haipai culture of distinctive characteristics, including more than 200 sections of various video courses, with a total video length of more than 10,000 minutes and more than 20,000 original photography pictures. The daily rolling broadcast program will break the barriers of time and space, allowing campers in different time zones to participate in activities anytime and anywhere.
This Camp actively expands the application scenarios and has created a communication community. Through the “one-to-one” pairing of Chinese volunteer students and foreign campers for participation in online courses, it has established a one-to-one relationship between 140 Chinese volunteer students and more than 180 foreign campers and realized the “heart-to-heart” interaction online. The interactive ticking tasks off the learning to-do list together from the perspective of youth peers can deepen communication, promote long-term contact and enhance friendship and understanding among youth.
This Camp is an attempt to carry out large-scale international educational exchange activities in an online manner under the new normal of pandemic prevention and control. The Internet technology enables teachers and students from more cities and regions in the world to participate in the activities, which has helped enhance the spillover effect of the exchanges among sister cities. This year's Camp also explored for the first time the way of “one district as the undertaker, multiple districts as coordinated partners” to promote overall development of international educational exchanges in different districts. More than 100 students from 24 middle schools in 8 districts, including Yangpu District, Huangpu District, Jing'an District, Pudong District, Xuhui District, Hongkou District, Putuo District and Minhang District, were selected to participate in the event, which helped enhance the international perspective of teachers and students and strengthen their international understanding and communication skills.
At the end of the short and joyful opening ceremony, students from the chorus of the No. 1 High School Affiliated to Tongji University and the volunteer students onsite sang the classic song “You Raise Me UP” with all the foreign campers online. As the lyrics go, “You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas, You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains, You raise me up to more than I can be”.
