While many Chinese watched movies at cinemas during the weeklong Spring Festival holiday, Zheng Wei explained the film The Spring Festival to an audience of visually impaired(受损伤的) people at cinema in Northern China's Tianjin.

"Fireworks light up the dark on New Year's Eve, and children are playing in an open place covered with white snow, said Zheng to the audience, describing the visual elements of the movie while holding a micro-phone and a seript.

As the founder of ”cinema for the blind “ in Tianjin,the55-year- -old has insisted on brightening the dark world of the visually impaired in his own way for 11 years.

Shao Yuxiang and her husband, who are both blind, are regular visitors of the cinema. She wore an elegant yellow sweater to attend the couple's significant "movie day".

Since October 2007, the free movies, which are described through audio, start at 9: 30 am on the third Saturday of each month. More than 150 movies have been screened to more than 20,000 visually impaired

"The theater is equipped with lights a sound system, projector, and a big screen to give the blind a people so far. complete and equal movie experience, "Zheng said.

In 2007, after having learned that a "cinema for the blind" established by Wang Weili had benefited many visually impaired people in Beijing, Zheng rushed to Wang's establishment for advice. Under Wang's guidance, Zheng built a new cinema in Tianjin and screened The Dream Factory by Chinese director Feng Xi-aogang. It attracted more than 50 visually impaired people from different districts and even suburban areas in Tianjin.

Zheng always treats movie selections with seriousness He usually chooses Mandarin language movies with positive themes that reflect modern society. Special movies for certain Chinese festivals are also part of Zheng’s selection criteria. "For example, The Founding of Republic is specially for National Day. Now, films for Spring Festival are on my agenda," Zheng said.

Close your eyes for a minute and imagine what life would be like if you had a hundred dollars less. Also imagine what it would be like spending the rest of your life with your eyes closed. Imagine having to read this page, not with your eyes but with your finger-tips.

With existing medical knowledge and skills, two-thirds of the world's 42 million, blind should not have to suffer. Unfortunately, rich countries possess most of this knowledge, while developing countries do not.

ORBIS is an international non-profit organization which operates the world's only flying teaching eye hospital. ORBIS intends to help fight blindness worldwide. Inside a DC-8 aircraft, there is a fully-equipped teaching hospital with television studio and classroom. Doctors are taught the latest techniques of bringing sight back to people there. Project ORBIS also aims at promoting peaceful cooperation among countries.

ORBIS tries to help developing countries by providing training during three-week medical programs. ORBIS has taught sight-saving techniques to over 3,000 doctors and nurses, who continue to cure tens of thousands of blind people every year. ORBIS has conducted 17 plan programs in China so far. For the seven to ten million blind in China ORBIS is planning to do more for them. At the moment an ORBIS is working on a long-term plan to develop a training center and to provide eye care service to Shanxi Province. ORBIS needs your help to continue their work and free people from blindness.

For just US$38, you can help one person see; for $380 you can bring sight to 10 people; $1,300 helps teach a doctor new skills; and for $13,000 you can provide a training program for a group of doctors who can make thousands of blind people see again. Your money can open their eyes to the world. Please help ORBIS improve the quality of life for so many people less fortunate than ourselves.

Volunteering abroad is great. Not only do you travel to an exotic country, you also meet like-minded people, and at the end of it all you have something to put on your CV to impress employers with．But did you ever stop to think about how great it is for the people on the receiving end?

In this context, Daniela Papi has a point-foreigners rushing heroically to volunteer in a country they’ve never heard of are unlikely to make a difference. But turning volunteering camps into classrooms, as Papi seems to advocate(倡导) in her article, risks throwing the baby out with the bath water by putting people off of volunteering.

When, a few years ago, I joined a group of international volunteers to help a small farming community in the Swiss Alps, we were all quite ignorant about the local conditions. But thanks to our group leader, it was both a helpful project for the locals and a fun and eye-opening experience for us．Before we had even traveled (at our own expense) to the mountaintop village, our group leader had spent time with the villagers preparing the project to make sure it would be of benefit to them．She. arranged for us to help in different areas, ensuring that we always worked alongside locals rather than for them．It was never "us" and "them", but always. "we", like a big family. As a result, conversation flowed and we learned a great deal just by casually talking to the locals as we worked． At the end, we left with a deep appreciation for the labor of love that goes into producing the food we eat every day一一an appreciation we could treasure ourselves and share with our peers．

Volunteering isn't about saving someone's life, or even about changing it. It's about touching a different world and reminding ourselves that there is much, much more to life than the daily routines we take for granted．With that knowledge, maybe, just maybe, we can go on to really change the world．