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Star volunteer eyes career in global governance
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At only 20 years old, Wang Li has already racked up an impressive record of community service and volunteer experience around the world. Now a university student in New York, Wang hopes this experience will lead to a career where she can improve the lives of the world’s least fortunate people.
Yet, only a few years ago Wang envisioned a different path for herself.
“I planned to study business management (in the US) to help my father operate his company after graduation,” Wang told Shanghai Daily.
A native of Dongguan, in south China’s Guangdong Province, Wang knew she wanted to enroll at a school in US following a study tour there when she was 12. At first, she planned on attending university in the country, but things accelerated when she and a classmate started applying for private high schools in 2009.
“Applying to colleges in the US was very popular in China at that time. But for high school, there were not too many people applying — especially in a small city like Dongguan, where people are more conservative in sending their children abroad,” said Wang. “We might have been the city’s first two students to study at an American high school, since the local media heavily covered our story that year.”
With the help of an agency in China, Wang was admitted to Baylor School in Tennessee. There, students are required to take part in either sports or community service after class. Wang chose the latter — a decision, she said, that would mark a turning point in her life.
Yet things didn’t go smoothly at first. Her father, for instance, wanted her to take up golf or some other activity that would be helpful in a business setting. What’s more, Wang explained that she was verbally and physically abused by one 7-year-old boy at a local community center.
Despite these obstacles, Wang persevered and continued to volunteer regularly at the center over the next three years, where she often looked after the children of single working parents. With time Wang became friends with many of these youngsters, while also branching out into other activities, such as volunteering at the local homeless shelter.
By her senior year at Baylor, Wang took her volunteer work to new heights when she helped establish a community children’s library in an unused factory building. Wang persuaded her fellow students to donate more than 3,000 books to the library, while 12 of them joined her to serve as volunteer librarians.
For these and other contributions to the community and the country, US president Barack Obama presented her with a bronze and two gold President’s Volunteer Service Awards between 2011 and 2012.
During spring break in 2013, Wang was among 10 Baylor students selected to attend the school’s 10-day Jamaica volunteer program. For this program, Wang and her classmates traveled to the impoverished Caribbean country, where they visited local orphanages, asylums, nursing homes and schools. What she saw there shocked her.
“Children in the orphanages were extremely emaciated and ... fed only once a day,” said Wang, who added that she was also disturbed by the abusive treatment and deplorable conditions experienced by Jamaica’s unfortunate youngsters. According to Wang, she saw staff members beating and abusing orphans, while in one asylum facility she says she saw children locked up in cages.
During the trip, several Jamaicans told her group that reports of sexual abuse and misappropriations of funds at such facilities often go ignored by local authorities, Wang claimed.
Inspired by the trip, Wang eventually raised over US$2,600 to fund the education of 18 Jamaican children for one year. Later in August of that same year, she volunteered at the Jiarong Temple Primary School in Tibet for one month. She has since raised over US$2,000 for this school as well.
As for her own education, it was around this time that Wang began to consider universities close to the UN headquarters in New York, where she hoped to secure an internship. In 2013, she entered Fordham University, located within easy reach of this global governance institution.
She also took part in other events organized to promote youth impact in world issues. In August 2014, she became the youth representative of China at the Trilateral Youth Summit, where she presented China’s economy and culture, and engaged in a mock trilateral collaboration discussion on environmental and economic issues.
She also took part in the Emerging Global Leaders Development Program, in which she participated in leadership lectures on innovation, multiculturalism, passion and tenacity, as well as networked with UN ambassadors and Fortune 500 executives. With other young people, she established an online education platform to help Liberian students affected by the Ebola outbreak.
She is now deputy chair of the UN Youth Representative Executive Board, building strategic partnerships with other groups, organizing monthly meeting with youth representatives, and assisting with UN department of public information projects.
Not surprisingly, amid all these activities, Wang’s initial interest in business has waned considerably over the years.
“Although I have been so busy that I can only sleep three or four hours a day many times, I think it is meaningful and hopeful to help people and make a better world,” Wang said.
Wang is now attending Columbia University as a junior, where she is pursuing a double major in political science and economics.
“Hillary Clinton is my idol and I want to take part in her presidential election campaign group,” she said.
“And I wish one day I can be a powerful woman like her.”
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