After seeing the difficult living conditions for children in a migrant (移民) camp in Tijuana, Mexico, Estefanía Rebellón took matters into her own hands.

She could not believe what she saw: families lacking even the most basic supplies. The children, sometimes shoeless and often dirty, clearly had no place to go.

Back at home, Rebellón could think of nothing else. “We have to do something,” she told her partner, Kyle Thomas Schmidt. A school — a safe place for the children to gather and learn — seemed much-needed. So, Rebellón and Schmidt hired volunteer teachers via social media, and using a thousand dollars from their savings, set up a temporary school at the Tijuana border. Classes were held in two large tents.

In five years, that pilot program has grown into the non-profit Yes We Can World Foundation, which operates three classrooms in transformed school buses and two schools in Tijuana, plus another in Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican city directly across the border from El Paso, Texas.

Funded by donations, the foundation’s now well-trained teachers have provided a bilingual education to more than 3,000 kids from ages 3 to 15. The schools follow an official curriculum (课程) from Mexico’s education ministry. As well, Yes We Can offers special courses, including one that helps kids understand more about human migration.

“The program’s success is easy to see,” says Josh Phelps, former director of operations for World Central Kitchen, which has provided meals to some Yes We Can schools. “The kids really enjoy it. There are huge smiles on their faces.”

More than 6.6 million people live in refugee camps around the world, according to the UN Refugee Agency. Rebellón says she’d like to expand the foundation’s reach and support migrant children globally.

“She is a powerhouse,” says Phelps, “and, I think, one of the most important people doing work at the border right now.”

If you expect to work in the future in the travel industry, you should begin learning Chinese.

That’s because Chinese people spent nearly $258 billion in total on international travel last year. That’s more than twice the combined amount spent on international travel by people from the United States and Germany, the next two biggest-spending nations. The Chinese are relative (相对的) newcomers when it comes to traveling beyond their nation’s borders and only a small percentage of them travel outside of China each year. Given the size of that nation’s population, even that small percentage represents well over 100 million Chinese travelers to foreign destinations.

Yet Chinese citizens flew, on average, just 65 miles last year vs. the 227 miles flown on average by US residents (居民), the 285 miles flown on average by Germans, the 271 miles flown on average by those from the United Kingdom, and the 632 miles flown by the average Canadian last year.

China’s high total spending on international travel and its low average number of miles flown on international travel may show that while only a small percentage of China’s residents actually travel outside their homeland, those who do spend a lot of money don’t go that far. But there are reasons for China’s low average of miles travel on international trips. A small percentage of Chinese now have enough money to travel internationally, while the number of people who do travel outside of China is growing fast every year. Besides, a large percentage of Chinese people traveling abroad stay close to home.

However, as more and more Chinese gain the financial ability to travel internationally and as Chinese become more and more interested in visiting destinations farther and farther away from home, their spending on international travel and the average distances flown will both rise rapidly.

Friday and Saturday were full of surprises for Chinese, as two places in China were listed as UNESCO World Heritage sites. The first, a World Natural Heritage, is made up of a series of migratory bird sanctuaries (候鸟保护地) along the coast of the Yellow Sea in Yancheng, East China’s Jiangsu Province. The second, the Liangzhu Archaeological Site in Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang Province, was listed as a World Cultural Heritage site.

China began the application process for the bird sanctuaries in 2017. It only took two years to successfully complete the process. The migratory bird sanctuaries are the central point of the East Asian-Australasian Flyway and many endangered species, especially threatened migratory birds including red-crowned cranes and flamingos, go there to hunt for food during the migration season. The birds usually take a month to finish their migration. At about 10 days into their migration, they must stop and find food in order to have the energy to continue their journey.

Compared to the short period for the World Natural Heritage’s application, the Liangzhu application was far more challenging. The application team spent six years making their dream a reality. The site in Liangzhu is evidence of the existence of an early regional state in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River during the late Neolithic (新石器) period in China, which helps fill in the gaps in the history of the rice-cultivating (种植) civilizations of China and East Asia more than 5000 years ago. The site was one of the 20th century’s most important archaeological discoveries in China.

With these two new additions, China now has 55 World Heritage sites, the highest number in the world. The successful application means greater responsibility and duties. Protecting these places is much more important and is our future work.