On June 25, 2015,783 students from the first group of the “Village Officials Go to College” programme graduated from Guangzhou RTVU. With an average age of 40, these students are at the centre of the construction of village organizations in rural areas that have helped villages to increase their prosperity.
Mr. Wang Shitong, member of Guangzhou Municipal Standing Committee and Director of the Department of Organization, and Mr. Yan Bing, Vice President of the Open University of China(OUC), attended the event and delivered speeches. Mr. Hong Yingping, Deputy Director of the Department of Organization of Guangzhou Municipal Committee, Mr. Qu Shaobing, Director of Guangzhou Education Bureau, and nearly 700 leaders, teachers, and students from the OUC system participated in the activities.
Since the launch of the programme, Guangzhou RTVU has taken into consideration the heavy responsibilities of the students in their home rural areas and arranged the courses in a scientific manner to ensure teaching quality and highlight their applicability. It put into full play of the advantages of remote education; strengthened learner support services; explored a personnel training model that meets the specific needs of Guangzhou; and successfully cultivated a group of leaders for the development of the rural economy, agricultural production, and rural culture. In the future, Guangzhou RTVU will continue to optimize resources, increase its efforts to improve services, and exert its creativity to build a regional service brand that can increase the academic degrees among grassroots cadres and make greater contributions to the construction of a learning society in Guangzhou.
The project has been in progress since 2012. The project carried out degree education for officials and party members in rural areas through both face-to-face instruction and online self-directed learning. It aims to help 6,000 village leaders in Guangzhou to get a junior college diploma in three to five years, building a team of grassroots officials that can meet the needs of Guangzhou’s urbanization. In addition, in order to motivate village cadres in Guangzhou to participate in the study, the municipal government also covered 80% of the cost of training.
Thousands of village officials have enrolled since the start of the project, hoping to improve their academic degrees and increase their capacity. They carefully handled the balance between work and study, and focused on integrating what they had learned into their day-to-day work. With diligent and tireless assiduity and an innovative spirit, they made the effort to improve their ability to implement rural policies, lead rural development, serve agricultural workers, and resolve disputes, so as to push forward the upgrading and transformation of rural areas and contribute to the urban development of Guangzhou. “Based on the teaching of knowledge and skills, the students have become the core of the village committees and are leading people to get rich through entrepreneurship," Mr. Zhang Wenxi, a representative of the first batch of graduates and a former accountant from Phoenix Village, Huadong Town, Huadu District, said proudly, “Guangzhou RTVU is a service station for us to enhance our own personal quality.”
By Guangzhou RTVU