"Others say I've touched a lot of people, but in fact a lot of people have touched me."
--Xu Benyu
Walking through the bustling city, but still leaving the life of traffic and bustling lights, into the depths of the mountains, from Guizhou to Africa, have left his footprints, and this walk, is more than ten years of time.
Today's Xu Benyu is no longer the young man who just graduated, his identity has changed, his status has changed, his vision has broadened, and his work has become busier, but even so, he will still insist on continuing his beloved public welfare undertakings every weekend.
Special education schools, welfare homes... As long as there is a place where there are volunteer workers, his shadow is indispensable, because in his understanding, love and responsibility are things that must be adhered to throughout his life.
Time has passed, and the volunteer teacher who touched China has stabbed the eyes of the public and has been the county leader for nearly 3 years.
Xu Benyu
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Xu Benyu was born in an ordinary peasant family in Liaocheng, Shandong Province, and like many local families, living conditions are very difficult.
The only stable source of income for the whole family is the meager remuneration that Xu Benyu's father can get as a primary school teacher, and if there is a special period, the family cannot even take out excess money to buy vegetables to make ends meet.
Although the family conditions are very difficult, But Xu Benyu has been a strict self-disciplined child since childhood, and he also knows the importance of reading, and the young Xu Benyu is determined to work hard and determined to go out of the mountains and see the vast world outside.
Fortunately, the kung fu paid off, and the seventeen-year-old Xu Benyu was admitted to Huazhong Agricultural University with very good results.
However, a little joy and a little sorrow, admission to a good university made Xu Benyu's parents happy, but Xu Benyu's family situation was very difficult, and how to solve the expensive tuition fees became a very big problem.
In order to be able to pay the tuition fees during college, Xu Benyu has always lived a work-study life, he has worked as a hotel tray worker, a tutor, and a coolie.
In addition to the salary earned from part-time work, Xu Benyu also relied on his excellent results and got a scholarship, coupled with the school's subsidy policy for special hardship students, so that Xu Benyu could successfully graduate from the undergraduate.
It was in an experience as a tutor that he saw a report article about a primary school in a poor county in Guizhou, which gave Xu Benyu the first real understanding of the volunteer worker group.
In this way, due to a report about the "Cave Primary School" in Guizhou, Xu Benyu embarked on the road to the depths of the mountains with four like-minded partners in the summer vacation of his junior year.
Five young people came to the Weimin Primary School in Doghangyan Village, Maochang Town, Dafang County, Guizhou Province, and several young people who had just entered the mountains were shocked by the hardships and barrenness here.
There is no water, no electricity, no roads to the outside of the village, and here the greatest desire of families is to be able to fill their stomachs, and nothing else.
However, in this elementary school, a group of children longed but with a hint of cowardly eyes, flashing but firm light, so that Xu Benyu and others suddenly had a reason to stay.
This time, the volunteer teaching was originally only two weeks, but in order to be able to teach more knowledge to the children, several young people insisted on extending the volunteer teaching time to two months.
Perhaps it was at this time that Xu Benyu found his own way in life.
After graduation, Xu Benyu was admitted to the publicly-funded graduate school of Huazhong Agricultural University with very good results, which is a dream opportunity for anyone.
What shocked countless people was that Xu Benyu himself, after repeated deliberations and countless opposition voices, decided to give up the opportunity to study graduate school, returned to the mountains of Guizhou again, and reopened his life as a volunteer teacher.
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Such a decision is undoubtedly shocking, but it is undoubtedly touching to countless people, so Xu Benyu's mother specially saved this opportunity for Xu Benyu to retain his graduate school admission qualifications for two years.
The reason why Xu Benyu is so persistent that he wants to return to Guizhou to teach again is because when he volunteered to teach in his junior year, he once made a promise to the children of Weimin Primary School, promising that they would come back to teach everyone after graduation.
A year later, in 2003, Xu Benyu, who graduated from the bachelor's degree, resolutely gave up the opportunity to study at public expense in order to fulfill the promise he had made under the sun, and carried his bags to the mountains.
He and seven like-minded volunteers, with more than 3,000 books, returned to this Weimin Primary School in the mountains of Bijie City, Guizhou Province, once again bringing knowledge and hope to the children here.
After teaching for the people's primary school for a year, Xu Benyu once again gave up the already stable life and went to the Dashi Primary School in Dashi Village, Dashui Township, where the conditions were more difficult and the life was even poorer, to continue teaching.
If what xu Benyu saw and heard when he first went to Weimin Primary School to support teaching shocked Xu Benyu, then the first day of teaching at Dashi Primary School in Dashi Village made Xu Benyu feel that his worldview had been subverted.
In a later interview, Xu Benyu said he never imagined that there would be such a poor and backward place in China, completely beyond the scope of what people could imagine.
Without electricity, let's leave it alone, tap water is a luxury, water is a huge problem, especially in the spring, it is difficult to find water in the village, and every family needs to go far away to fetch water.
In many impoverished areas in the north, nests are used to fill their stomachs, while the villagers of Dashi Village are fed with corn rice and sauerkraut soup.
Although corn rice can be full, but the corn particles are very rough, so after eating, the stomach will be uncomfortable, and when it comes to rest at night, there will be fleas and bed bugs from time to time to disturb people to sleep.
What makes Xu Benyu feel uncomfortable is not the harsh conditions, but the boundless loneliness.
Due to the scarcity of teaching resources, he not only teaches Chinese and mathematics, but also takes care of other subjects such as English, physical education and even music.
From food, clothing, housing and transportation to culture and education, everything here made Xu Benyu have deep doubts, but it also gave Xu Benyu great motivation and determination, after all, knowledge is the most valuable wealth.
Xu Benyu said that although he himself is not very rich, fortunately, he has a lot of ink in his head, so that he can use knowledge to help many children - "Others have helped you, not to help him, but to hope that you can help more people who need help." ”
With the support of Xu Benyu, this group of children who are eager for knowledge have higher enthusiasm and motivation to learn, and have achieved good results, while the local villagers have begun to have a new understanding of knowledge, and pay more and more attention to education.
In this way, Xu Benyu's volunteer teaching life, after several tosses and turns, began a new story in Dashi Village, a difficult but beautiful story.
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This year, the story of Xu Benyu's volunteer teaching was widely circulated, such a story touched countless people, his story with this group of children, spread from all over the motherland, all the way to the other side of the ocean, so that more and more enthusiastic people saw this group of lovely children.
People from all over the world have extended a helping hand to the children in the depths of the mountains, sending them more warmth and hope.
Xu Benyu himself did not expect that what he did would bring such a series of butterfly effects.
In this regard, he said that for what he has done, it is still far from enough, because there are still many kind people to care for and help these children, and there are still many children waiting for help.
After Xu Benyu taught in Dashi Village for more than a year, the children of Dashi Village built a new school building with the help of volunteers led by Xu Benyu and people from all walks of life.
The school building was built with donations of 80,000 yuan from caring people from all over the world and more than 200,000 yuan donated by the local government.
Because of the limitations of economic ability, it is difficult for Xu Benyu to help this group of children out of the predicament in terms of material conditions, but he still chooses to insist on relying on his own efforts to let the children here know that the world has not abandoned them, the country has not abandoned them, and they are not worse than any other children.
At the award ceremony of the moving Chinese this year, the host read out the following award speech:
"From the bustling city to the depths of the mountains, a recently graduated college student used his young shoulders to resist the dilapidated classroom, resist loneliness and poverty, and shoulder the responsibilities that did not belong to him."
More than a year later, Xu Benyu officially ended his volunteer teaching life in Dashi Village and is about to return to Huazhong Agricultural University to continue his graduate studies.
On the day he left Dashi Village, all the children and parents stood on both sides of Xu Benyu's inevitable path, sending him smiles, hugs, thanks, and blessings.
Oishi's journey is over, but Xu Benyu's volunteer career is far from over.
Later, Xu Benyu traveled to Africa and arrived in Zimbabwe to continue volunteering as a volunteer among the foreign aid personnel.
A year later, the Beijing Olympic Games were successfully held, and he became a glorious Olympic volunteer again.
During the time of graduate school, even if the learning task is becoming more and more arduous, volunteer service activities still occupy a very important position in Xu Benyu's life.
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In an interview, Xu Benyu said that since he was very young, his mother has always taught herself to be a person who knows the grace of the map, and the grace of the dripping water is bound to spring up to repay.
The mother also told Xu Benyu that it might not be so difficult for a person to reach out, but some help for those who really needed it was likely to be a winter dress, a bowl of rations during famine, as essential.
On the road of Xu Benyu's growth, he was also fortunate to meet many kind people, helped him, and also influenced him, making Xu Benyu determined to become a person worthy of himself, and even more worthy of those who had extended a helping hand to him.
When Xu Benyu had not yet left Dashi Hope Primary School, a volunteer teaching team called "Benyu Volunteer Service Team" was officially established in Huazhong Agricultural University, so that the volunteers of Dashi Hope Primary School could continue to "pass on the torch".
Every year, the school will send new volunteers to relay the volunteer teaching action here, so that more young people can better access volunteer service, so that Xu Benyu's efforts will not be wasted, and his spirit will be inherited.
More and more young people have gathered together from different places to form a unique "youth love circle", so that a group of like-minded young people can continue to shine together.
After Xu Benyu graduated with a master's degree, he successively served as deputy secretary of the Youth League Committee of Huazhong Agricultural University, director of the School Department of the Hubei Provincial Committee of the Communist Youth League, and deputy secretary of the Zigui County Party Committee.
Although he was pushed behind the scenes from the front of the stage, Xu Benyu is still committed to promoting the work of young volunteers and encouraging more young people to do their best to help more people.
Today, Xu Benyu has left the volunteer front line and become a county-level leader with three years of work experience.
In his spare time, volunteering is still his lifelong love, so that more children can be exposed to knowledge, have the opportunity to read and learn, and will be his eternal desire and goal.
From an ordinary birth, a painstaking blood, ten years of hard reading, to work-study, immersion in reading, self-reliance and self-reliance, to choose one of the two, to give up graduate school, to devote themselves to the mountains, and then to today's cohesion only to bring more hope and opportunities to the children in the mountains.
All of this is the transmission of love, and it is Xu Benyu who, after being helped by others, strives to grow into the person who can repay the society and help others.
In August 2020, Xu Benyu was elected as a member of the 13th Standing Committee of the All-China Youth Federation.
At the "Qia Classmate Youth - China Outstanding Youth Forum", Xu Benyu attended and delivered a speech as a volunteer representative who has made outstanding contributions to education in western China.
Xu Benyu once again told the story of volunteer teaching to everyone, in addition to being moved and sad, he was very lonely, he was too lonely, the pain in his heart could not be told, and he wanted to give up several times...
He is not a superman, but just an ordinary person with flesh and blood and seven passions.
He said that although he is no longer at the forefront of volunteer teaching, his concern and concern for education in the western region will be passed on in another way, and he hopes that everyone can pay attention to the children in poor mountainous areas with a grateful heart and their own practical actions.
Xu Benyu once said, "Love and responsibility are the always unchanging melody." ”
Integrate the spirit of volunteerism into the work, take volunteer service as a way of life, so that you can harvest a love, enhance a ability, and achieve a happiness.
As the song goes: As long as everyone gives a little love, the world will become a beautiful world...