Ms. Xing Chungui, Secretary of General Party Branch of Xinfeng community, Jinjiazhuang Street, Jinjiazhuang District, Maanshan City, is a delegate to the 18th Party Congress and a law student from Maanshan RTVU's 2010 autumn class, and was awarded nearly 20 honors including the “2011 National Outstanding Party Worker”, “2011 Anhui Province Outstanding Party Worker”, and “Anhui Advanced Individual of Caring Next Generation”.
The Self-Reliant and Studious “Yu Gong Woman”
The Xinfeng community in the Jinjiazhuang district of Maanshan City is a typical old community, in which live 4,300 families and nearly 14,000 people spread over an area of 260 thousand square meters. Xing realized that knowledge was the only way to meet the residents' increasing need for management services and the increasing difficulty of meeting those needs, and that it could bring change and a better life for the residents. As a result, Xing began a new journey to seek knowledge, and went back to school to study law at Maanshan RTVU.
Working people know that it's not easy to find time to read and study after a full day of work, and she is also a community cadre, even earning the nickname “neighborhood prime minister”, but she has continued to persist in her endeavors. She said, “I want to be a 'Yu Gong Woman', to climb over the learning mountain”.
After enrollment, RTVU's teaching methods opened a new world to Xing. She benefited much more from the care shown by teachers, resources and practical activities after class, and abundant online learning resources, all of which led to the blossoming of her individual abilities. She put her studies to practical use through the forum: “If I were the general secretary of the community” , and organized local staff from the community to participate in the forum in order to collect “golden ideas” on the construction and management of the community. Additionally, she organized a series of activities widely welcome by community residents such as the “neighborhood’s festival of community”. As the old Chinese saying goes: “When I reach the top of the mountain, I can hold all mountains in a single glance”. Xing often said that she appreciated being able to improve her personal qualities, broaden her horizons, and enhanced her ability to serve the people.
Elderly People Without Families Find "One of Their Own"
There are now six elderly and widowed residents and three elderly parents without nearby families in Xinfeng community. Xing, the community’s director, and deputy directors created a programme to pair-up with those elderly people in the form of “each one helps one”, with Xing helping two aged and widowed people herself.
Xu Shanfang, aged more than 80, lives alone in section 5 building 4 of Xinfeng community, and is childless, so Xing became “her girl”. She often goes to chat with the old woman, even washing her clothes and quilt. When the old woman gets ill, she will find a doctor and buy medicine for her. For example, some days ago when the elderly woman lost a tooth, Xing was the first person she went to tell.
Another home often visited by Xing is that of Wei Zhaohua, who is more than 70 years old. Wei Zhaohua has lain paralyzed in bed for more than ten years, and lives in Xinfeng community with his old wife in a small shed less than twenty square meters in size. Xing would send some delicious food to them occasionally and help to care for them. After the construction of the first batch of low-rent flats in Jinjiazhuang district, Xing helped them to apply for their first home. Now they finally have a key for their very own home.
With Xing Chungui in the lead, 83 Party volunteers from the community have established a community security patrol, cleaning services team, and cultural services team, and all kinds of community activities have been carried out vigorously. For example, the activity “showing identity, establishing image” includes twelve Community Party Member Model Posts including the posts of "helping the disabled and orphans" and the "hygiene post; as well as the activity of “help one time, give a ride”, which helps job seekers get help from “the helping and guiding system”.
The Disadvantaged Treated as "Family"
Red-Cap Child Care is a famous “small table” business in Xinfeng community, and is responsible for taking care of feeding and shuttling children. The person in charge of the class is called He Jinhua, who was previously unemployed.
In 2003, when Xing first met the unemployed He Jinhua, she let He join the training class in housekeeping and starting business, and not only helped her apply for a small business loan of twenty thousand Yuan, but also coordinated to deal with three shops in the community to help her start a business. Nowadays, this “small table” continues to grow, and employs 6 women aged more than 40 in the community who were previously unable to find work.
Additionally, Xing has carried out roundly the comprehensive agency for serving people in the community, implemented the “heart-to-heart project”, helps granting employment subsidies of more than 100 thousand Yuan for older residents of the community, organizes 185 laid-off workers to participate in free technical training, helps providing the urban employee medical insurance or endowment insurance for 1,312 laid-off workers, and helps provide low-rent housing subsidies for 198 low-income families.
The “Founder” of Love Home
Through the usual interviews, Xing has come to know that some unattended children and migrant workers’ children in the community are suffering from neglect, and consequently she began to explore what positive steps might be taken to assist with social management.
Through dozens of interviews, she has successfully managed to get more than six hundred thousand Yuan from the Jinjiazhuang district government, and uses such money to redecorate the former residents’ committee room and founded a “love home” integrating “teaching and dining room, the rest room, and the resting place”, so as to provide such free services as: assistance with homework, dinner, and a noon break bed for those unattended children, migrant workers’ children, and the children from particularly poor households.
Moreover, in the “love home”, she has made full use of the public service jobs developed by Jinjiazhuang district to select and manage recent graduates of the community to work as mentors in the “love home” and arrange those unemployed people to work as nurses, cooks and security guards. Currently there are more than 70 children living in “love home”, who are growing happily in a warm environment each day.
The Community Culture “Enthusiast”
The power of culture is important for the harmony of a community. As a result, Xing prefers to have culture dominate the community stage. She has integrated all kinds of resources in every way to construct nearly two thousand square meters of activities venues in the community. She organizes those residents who love cultural activities and what they represent and establishes four folk art groups, which can plan mass sports activities all the year round, and pays attention to teaching and enlightening people through culture. In 2007, the “Yingshanhong” community art troupe took part in the old age dance contest in Hong Kong and won the highest award of “Bauhinia”; in 2009 the art troupe took part in the Sino-Korean “Flos Hibisci” contest and won the highest award.
She merges the personality of the community with the greater culture, and tries hard to foster positive community spirit characterized by civilization and harmony. She is constantly organizing activities propagating, teaching, and practicing “family values” which mainly include “respecting the old and caring for the young, equality of men and women, family harmony, being diligent and thrifty, neighborhood unity”, and gained fruitful results in the culture and ideology of the community. Xinfeng district has been successively awarded 3 national titles of honor including “the National Advanced Collective in mass sports”, 11 provincial titles of honor such as “Anhui Ten Community with Major Cultural Features” and 12 municipal titles of honor, and in the community there is one person who has won the “National Star of Respecting for the Elderly”, one national civilized family, two provincial peace families, one person who has achieved municipal recognition as one of the “Top ten People”, and two people who have been awarded the “Municipal Star of Respecting for the Elderly”. In addition, the community has chosen 9 civilized buildings and 1,608 families of “Five good Civilized Family” of the community, which is half of the total community, and the idea of living with civility, living healthily, and living harmoniously has become the trend in the community.
In eleven years, Xing Chungui hasn't been credited with any world-shaking great achievements, but she has continued to tirelessly an humbly work for residential health, the care of orphans and the elderly, and in job creation, just like “Thousand-hand Kwanyin”. She is like a flag erected in the promised land, ever watching over her community. She, along with the community’s residents, is using her own hard-work and wisdom to wholeheartedly devote her talent and effort to the prosperity and stabilization of Xinfeng community.