From Zhaoqing to Meizhou: Envision Education Expands in Guangdong

For the past few months, the Envision team has been hard at work planning the next chapter of our journey. After the success of our expansions in Nepal, we set our sights on Guangdong province, a region home to rural communities where it’s common for schools to lack sufficient access to digital learning opportunities. Our mission remained unchanged: bridge that gap, one lab at a time. 

Though our plane ride was mere hours ago, the journey had begun months earlier. At Concordia’s annual Christmas Bazaar, we set up a booth in the Makerspace, where we laser cut and sold intricate Christmas ornaments to raise funds for our mission. By the end of the day, the funds we raised had brought us one step closer to making this trip a reality. With the funds secured, the team purchased twenty computers from partner vendors we had been working with for the past three years.

Finally, the long-awaited day of departure arrived. We met early in the morning to catch our flight to Guangzhou. There, we met Ms. Summer, the founder of Shining Star, the organization that made this trip possible. We loaded our bags into a van and began the three-and-a-half-hour drive to our hotel through the winding roads of the rural mountains.

After settling in and taking a moment to shake off the long journey, we gathered for dinner. As we ate, Ms. Summer shared the schedule and itinerary for the next few days, the condition of the students and their families, and basic rules and guidelines for when we were at school. 

She told us about the school, a small campus deep in the mountains. The school had ninety-two students ranging from grades one through five. Many of them come from families facing difficult circumstances, and hearing their stories reminded us of the importance of our mission. Improving the lives of these children was our true goal; the monitors and keyboards we worked so hard to bring were merely our mechanism to do so.

After months of planning, we are once again ready to continue our mission alongside our partner, Shining Star. We cannot wait to continue this blog while overlooking the mountainous landscape of Guangdong. 

Contributors: Jonathan Lueth, Micah Tang, Austin Tang