Reiren, a Year 12 student at Yew Chung International School of Shanghai (YCIS) has recently been using her language skills to help animals and families in Shanghai. Since last October, she has been volunteering at a local Japanese animal organization called “Bow Meow Shanghai”. Reiren started out as a volunteer, but she recently became more involved with the organization and inspired to plan an animal adoption day at the school’s Gubei Campus. Here, she discusses her involvement with the organization and her ambitions to help others.
Why did you start volunteering at Bow Meow Shanghai?
I have been participating in the charity organization since October 2014 for my major Community, Service, and Action (CAS) project for my IB diploma. One of my teachers, Mr. Okada, first told me about the organization. I also have a dog of my own and this helped inspire me to get involved.
What is your role as a volunteer?
Bow Meow Shanghai helps people adopt stray animals. I go to the adoption days held at Laowai Jie in Gubei every month. The stray animals are raised at the volunteers’ homes and they are brought to the adoption days to appeal to people who are looking to adopt a pet. My job there is to translate Chinese or English to Japanese (my native language) and to help the Japanese-group volunteers communicate with other people.
With regard to other activities at YCIS, we have advertised our adoption days by posting signs around the school and holding a “Free Dress Day”, where students could come dressed in casual clothes rather than their uniforms if they made a contribution to support the organization. After the animal-themed Free Dress Day held in December, we were able to donate more than RMB 4000 to the volunteers of the organization. Most of the volunteers raise more than four dogs or cats at once so they have to spend a lot of time taking care of the animals, which also makes it costly. Therefore, this Free Dress Day was of great help for them.
Your adoption day on May 17 was a great success in the community. How did you go about planning the event?
We were holding an adoption day once per month; however it didn’t seem frequent enough. Our volunteers work very hard and some of our Japanese volunteers even foster animals for over a year. Therefore, we thought we would increase the number of adoption days in the hopes of getting more animals adopted.
I discussed this idea with Mr. Okada, and we determined that it would be great if we could hold the event right outside of our campus gates. We target the international community for adoptions, and our campus is in a prime location in Gubei for international family pet adopters. I approached our Co-Principal, Dr. Swann, about the idea and he asked me to write a proposal. In my proposal, I was very clear about the purpose of the event and had logistics planned out, so our Co-Principals agreed that we could host the event at school. On the day of the event, we were all very happy with the turnout and adoption results.
What is your favorite part about volunteering at the organization?
I have found my YCIS CAS project and supporting Bow Meow Shanghai to be to be very meaningful. This job gives me a great sense of accomplishment since I am able to help the volunteers. When a family or individual adopts the animals, we all feel very happy. I am glad that I’ve had the chance to be part of the organization and I will continue to do my best to help the volunteers and animals.
What is your biggest takeaway from the project?
We are ultimately helping animals, and that is very valuable. It’s important for people to take responsibility for animals, and there are many out there that need help. I’m glad that I can be part of this and I plan to continue to be involved. Next year, I am thinking about also being involved in the Environmental Club at YCIS and perhaps volunteer to plant trees. Although planting trees and helping animals are very different projects, they serve the same purpose of helping others, and that’s what life is all about.
