Volunteer group leader puts daily needs of others first
Ningxia Hui senior has devoted her life to resolving problems in her community
Wang Lanhua, the Party chief of a volunteer group in Wuzhong, Ningxia Hui autonomous region, regards solving problems for community residents as a task she will pursue until the end of her life.
The 71-year-old has been doing volunteer work for dozens of years. The group she set up in 2005 has raised 980,000 yuan ($150,000), taken part in 9,000 charity activities and resolved more than 7,000 problems for residents.
Wang was presented with the July 1 Medal, the highest honor for a member of the Communist Party of China, on June 29. “We are supposed to take residents’ problems as our concerns and work for the people,” Wang said.
She thought being an honest, down-to-earth person was the reason why she had been chosen to be one of the 29 recipients of the medal. “As volunteers, we do selfless deeds without rewards. Helping others makes me feel fulfilled,” Wang said.
Wang joined the Party in 1995. She had served residents in a community in Wuzhong’s Litong district for nearly 20 years before retiring from the neighborhood committee.
Bored with retirement, she founded the first community volunteer group in Wuzhong so that she could keep serving people.
There were originally seven volunteers in the group, which was named after Wang. They worked together in her 70-square-meter apartment.
Wang was always busy dealing with residents’ problems, taking care of the elderly, mediating conflicts between couples and fixing broken sewer pipes or heaters. If people couldn’t find her in the neighborhood committee office, they would visit her house, and she always welcomed residents in need.
She said she tried her best to raise money for people who were seriously ill or disabled, and she offered to help vulnerable groups without asking for any reward. During holidays, she saved money from her meager income to take care of lonely seniors.
“Whether a problem is trivial or major, ignoring it or failing to resolve is not an option. I should not break their trust,” she said.
In 2008, a child in the community was diagnosed with leukemia. Wang mobilized members of the volunteer group to donate money while working with local media to collect public donations.
“Every time we raised 1,000 or 2,000 yuan, we rushed to the hospital to pay for treatment, and we finally collected more than 130,000 yuan for the child,” Wang said, adding that the child was successfully treated.
As a member of the Hui ethnic group, Wang has united people of the Hui and Han ethnic groups in the community.
She takes care of Han people who are dealing with life difficulties and helps them find opportunities to earn a living, such as opening a barbershop or a fruit store. “Here, the Hui and the Han cannot live without each other. As President Xi Jinping said, people of all ethnic groups are tightly bound together like pomegranate seeds. Everyone respects each other, understands each other and cares for each other.”
Wang has moved her office from her house to a 1,400-squaremeter volunteer service center.
Inspired by Wang and her volunteer group, Litong district has 60,000 registered volunteers, nearly 90 percent of them women.
“More young people have volunteered to join us, and they will gradually play a leading role in the group. They will pass on our mission in the future,” Wang said.
“The medal is full of responsibility and honor, and it means a lot to me. It reminds me of the struggles and difficulties the CPC experienced during the 100 years it spent leading Chinese people to live a happy life. The medal is a symbol of the greatness of the Party and the country’s prosperity.”