Carrie likes buying new clothes. But she doesn’t have any room for her new clothes because she has too many clothes in her room. Her friends say that she can give some of them to others.

Carrie doesn’t want to do this because she spends lots of money on her clothes. She wants to sell her clothes. Her friends tell her that it is a bad idea. They think no one can buy her second-hand clothes because her clothes are not new any more.

Carrie doesn’t think so. She takes pictures of her clothes and then posts (发布) them on a website (网站). It sells second-hand things. Two weeks passed by (过去了), Carrie didn’t sell any clothes.

Now, Carrie thinks that her friends are right. No one wants to buy her clothes. Carrie thinks that it’s a good way to give her clothes to charity (慈善机构) after all. She is very happy because her clothes can help the poor people.

Cheng Feng is a teacher. However, to many of her students, the 33-year-old teacher is more than that. Cheng’s care for her students has made her “a mother” to them.

Over the past years, Cheng has gone into the mountains and worked in several poor schools in Poyang to help village children.

Right after graduation in 2011, Cheng became a teacher at Tutang Primary School in Youcheng Town of Poyang. Over the following four years, she did well at her job there.

Beitang Primary School is a poor school far away from her home. When Cheng found out it was on going to close because of a lack (缺少) of teachers, she decided to give up her life at Tutang Primary School and go there.

After arriving there, she learned that because of the poor educational conditions, many local parents had sent their children to schools further away. Cheng tried her best to encourage seventeen students to return. She called upon her college classmates to offer a helping hand. To make the students’ life more colorful, Cheng learned music, sports and art courses online and then taught the students. As things got well at Beitang Primary School, Cheng went to Siwanghu Primary School.

Cheng’s husband is 35 years old. He always supports Cheng’s choice. He has also served as a teacher in Poyang over the years.

“We should help the children to see further and dream bigger.” Cheng says.

While volunteering in Tanzania, my wife and I got the idea of a “street library” because children in our neighborhood had no chance to read.

We wanted to make books available to local children who wanted to read. We contacted(联系) a famous international charity(慈善机构) for collecting money. We ordered books in three bookstores of the capital city. My wife Sue covered all 180 books with beautiful paper to keep them clean. A local man made some boxes to store the books. I made some “library cards” and a tailor called Saddiqi, agreeing to keep the boxes in his shop and run the library. The library was ready to open!

Anyone could sign up with their name and their parent’s mobile phone number. Saddiqi gave each of them a card with a number, with which they could read the books only in his shop. I thought it was better than letting readers take away the books. Within five days we had over 100 members and more were joining each day! Even though the books were mainly for children in different grades, adults were using the library for free.

This project was, I think, one of the most rewarding things we did in Tanzania. It was a thank-you gift to our neighbours for welcoming us so warmly into their lives. The whole community worked together on the street library and that’s surely part of the reason why it is still open after we left.