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September 23, 2014

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Home » District » Minhang

Finding new space in the people-to-people world

By Lu Feiran | September 23, 2014, Tuesday | Print Edition

TOO many young people today are couch potatoes who rely on the Internet for their social lives. A new organization in Minhang is aiming to get them offline and out of the house for some personal contact and cultural enrichment.

The group, called Youth Space, is an umbrella organization formed under the auspices of the Minhang District Youth League Committee. It will bring together and nurture small cultural activities that often have trouble making it on their own.

The committee said it will make available 30 sites this year where local cultural groups can offer their activities to young people and the community at large.

One of the spokes in the umbrella is 175 Dance Group.

“Youth Space has helped us relieve our financial burden to some extent,” said Miao Xiaolong, director of the group, which was one of the first to join the new organization. “What’s more, I believe it provides a chance for us to popularize dancing in the district.”

The dance group is housed on Qixing Road, where eight professional dancers act as teachers. The group, now a year old, has performed in Shanghai theaters, but it still remains a rather obscure organization in the community.

Some 200 people have taken up the chance to learn to dance. Most of them heard about the center from word of mouth.

Miao has been involved with choreography for most of his adult life. He said he opened the dance center not to make money, but to introduce more people to the fun and art of dancing. Despite tight financial conditions, he offers free courses for seniors once a week.

“The group and funding for the dance center have relied on contributions and money invested by our founders,” he said. “But the weight of surviving on just dreams and idealism has been hard to bear.”

Now, with the help of Youth Space, the center will be giving lessons in local communities and expanding its focus to include families and young office workers. Youth Space will provide the venues and promote the courses in online social media.

“Youth Space gives us more resources to help us realize our goals,” said Miao.

Just like the 175 Dance Group, Dejian School, which specializes in etiquette training, also sees collaboration with Youth Space as a white knight for its nonprofit services.

The school, founded by former flight attendant Shen Linjie, helps people improve their social skills and includes a course on Chinese cultural traditions for corporate executives and white-collar workers.

“We try to help people become more cultured and cultivated,” said Shen. “If we improve the self-image of people, we improve the whole social environment, bit by bit.”

Shen said the assistance of Youth Space will allow the school to expand its offerings. Next year, for example, a course will be tailored for new college graduates.

“We will also collaborate with the Xinzhuang Industrial Zone to give workplace etiquette training to new employees, helping them adapt to a new environment,” Shen said. “We are considering uploading videos of our training classes to social media platforms, so that more people can see them.”

Young people who have attended the school’s courses say their lifestyles were changed and improved.

Ray Pei, a 25-year-old white-collar worker, said he used to spend his spare time watching movies and playing online games. After attending one activity at Youth Space, he realized that his world had grown too narrow and there was a wider, exciting realm awaiting him.

“It felt very good to get together with other people my age,” he said. “I learned a lot, and I made some great new friends.”

Pei said now he follows the official WeChat account of Youth Space to see if there are more activities he might join.

“The organization is just beginning, and I think it’s exciting to see the kinds of activities that it is making available and encouraging us to join,” he said.

Social workers in Minhang said Youth Space is prompting them to consider other ways to design programs that attract the attention of young people.

For example, Han Xiaoyan, director of the Wujing Town Star Picker Social Service Center, said the center is trying to come up with ways to combine art with social work.

With a site provided by Youth Space, Han wants to start a hand drum class. Once young people learn the folk art, he hopes they will volunteer to pass their expertise on to other people.

“We have invited two Kenyan students from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology to be our teachers,” Han said. “They play very well. This summer holiday, we had 10 people who learned how to play the drums in just 10 classes.”

The young people have now volunteered to teach hand drumming in primary schools.

“Art makes people happy and energetic,” Han said. “We benefit not only from learning an art but also from the experience of passing on what we learn to others.”

Minhang


 

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