纽约客专栏：做个志愿者

Two years ago I wrote an article for this column about the importance of volunteering. In it I said that I hoped to see many more students in China do volunteer work, whether it was to help educate poor children, clean up a local park, visit sick old people in the hospital, help migrant workers adapt to life in their cities, support young artists and musicians, or anything else that involved giving time to help make our society a better one. Many people who read the article wrote back to me to tell me about their own volunteer work. I still get emails, over two years later, from students who want to discuss their own volunteer activities or who ask for advice on how to set up their own programs.

两年前，我为这个专栏写过一篇关于志愿工作的重要性的文章。在文章中，我曾经说过我希望看到更多的中国学生做志愿工作，不管是帮助教育贫困儿童，打扫本地公园，到医院里探望生病的老人，帮助农民工适应城市生活，支持年轻的艺术家和音乐家，还是任何通过投入自己的时间使我们的社会变得更好的事情。很多人读了文章之后给我写信，向我讲述他们自己参与的志愿工作。两年之后，我仍然能收到一些学生的电邮，他们或想与我谈论他们自己的志愿活动，或为创建自己的志愿工作计划而来寻求建议。

This month I want to discuss a program called “Teach for America, ” which is an example of how a very determined person can make a large difference in the lives of others. In this program students volunteer to take two years off after they graduate from university to go to the poorest schools in the USA to help teach young students. They are paid just enough money to live, but they must sacrifice two years of their careers with much higher-paying jobs to complete the program.

这个月我想介绍一个叫做“为美国教书”的工程，这是一个决心坚定的人如何能使其他人的生活产生巨大变化的范例。在这个工程中，学生们在大学毕业后自愿花费两年时间到美国最贫穷的学校里去帮助教育那些年轻的学生们。他们被给予仅够满足生活的报酬，但是却要牺牲两年时间来完成这个工程，而这两年他们本可以从事报酬高得多的职业。

It seems to me that this is a wonderful program for two reasons. It helps bring successful and optimistic young people to work with and educate children who don’t often have the chance to meet such people. And it teaches these university students, who are going to be the future leaders of America, about some of the deepest problems in America and about the ones who, through no fault of their own, suffer the most from these problems.

我觉得这是个极好的工程，原因有二。它使得那些成功而又乐观的年轻人来到孩子们中间工作，为这些不常有机会见到这样的人的孩子们提供教育。这也使这些将来会成为美国领导者的大学生们了解到美国社会一些最深层次的问题，也了解了解那些虽不是他们自己的过错却深受这些问题之害的人。

Last year more than 17,000 students applied to join “Teach for America, ” which only takes in as many volunteers as it can use. The program is particularly popular among the most famous US universities, with around 8% of the students in Ivy League universities applying to join the program. The 3,700 teachers in the program are funded by individuals as well as by large corporations, and they teach in 22 areas, ranging from Indian reservations to urban ghettos1 to very poor farming communities.

去年有超过１．７万名学生申请参加“为美国教书”工程，而该工程只能接收有限数量的志愿者。这项工程在那些最著名的美国大学中尤其受欢迎，大约８％的常春藤联盟学校的学生申请参加这项工程。这项工程的３７００名教师由个人及大企业资助，执教于２２个地区，范围涉及印第安保留地、城市贫民区以及极其贫穷的农村。

The “Teach for America” program was actually founded by Wendy Kopp, a young female student from Princeton University, who in her fourth year of university wrote a student report about the need for a national teaching program that functioned like the Peace Corps, which sends American university students to the poorest parts of the world to work on charity projects. In 1990 after she graduated from university she began putting together the program she described in her report. She was able to raise money from Exxon, a large US oil company, to start the program and gradually raised additional funds to keep the program growing.

“为美国教书”工程实际上是由温迪·科普创立的，她是来自普林斯顿大学的一名年轻女学生。在大学四年级的时候她写了一篇学生报告，阐述了关于建立一个像和平队那样发挥作用的举国教育工程的必要性，和平队派遣美国大学生到世界上最贫穷的地方从事慈善工作。１９９０年大学毕业后她开始规划组织她在那篇报告中所描述的项目。她成功地从埃克森公司——一家美国大石油公司筹集到了资金来开始她的项目，并不断地募集新的资金来保证项目的发展。

There are similar educational programs in China. For example, one of my Tsinghua students who is graduating in June 2006, and who received a very good job offer from one of the most prestigious companies in the world, told me that he plans to ask the company if he can start working one year later. He wants to spend the first year after university in a government program that sends Tsinghua students to poor provinces in the western part of China to teach children in local schools. Of course I am very proud of him for wanting to do that, and I hope he is able to do it.

在中国也有类似的教育项目。比如，我在清华的一名学生将在２００６年６月毕业，他已经被一家享誉全球的公司聘用，职位也很好。他告诉我他准备向公司申请能否（大学毕业）一年后再开始工作，因为他想在大学毕业后的第一年参加一项将清华毕业生派往中国西部贫困省份支边援教的政府工程。当然，我为他愿意这样做而感到非常骄傲，我也希望他能够做到。

His program is very different from “Teach for America” in at least one important way -- “Teach for America” was created and run by individuals and not by the government, which has no role at all in the program. The fact that “Teach for America” was started by a young lady who is deeply concerned about educating the poor, and is managed by other young people who are not doing it for political advantage or large pay (they are paid very little, in fact), means that they don’t waste valuable resources and their only interest is in improving the lives of the children they teach. Even though they are able to spend far less money than the government can, they may actually do a better job.

他所参与的这项工程与“为美国教书”至少在一个方面截然不同——“为美国教书”工程是由个人而不是政府创建和运作的，政府在这项工程中没有扮演任何角色。 “为美国教书”工程是由一个深切关注穷人教育的年轻女士所创办，并由其他一些不图政治利益和高额薪水（事实上他们收入微薄）的年轻人管理。这些事实表明他们不浪费珍贵资源，他们惟一关注的就是改善他们所教授的孩子们的生活。尽管他们所能运用的资金远少于政府之力，但实际上他们可能做得更好。

Can someone in China replicate2 Wendy Kopp’s success﹖ I realize that there are very different conditions that make it more difficult in China. It is hard, sometimes even impossible, to create a private organization unrelated to the government, since these organizations require a lot of work to get approval. There is also less of a tradition of charitable giving by corporations and wealthy individuals in China, although I believe that an increasing number of Chinese are donating money to worthy causes.

中国能有人像温迪·科普这样成功地推动一项志愿工程吗？我注意到中美两国之间巨大的差异使这样的事情在中国变得更加困难。要在中国创立一个与政府不相干的私人组织非常困难，有的时候甚至是不可能的，因为这些组织需要做大量的工作来得到批准，而且中国缺乏企业以及富人做慈善捐赠的传统，虽然我相信有越来越多的人捐款给有意义的事业。

Still, it is never easy for someone to have started something like Wendy Kopp did. It took a lot of work, many failures, and tremendous determination to succeed in creating a national charitable program with nearly 4,000 workers. But in order to be very successful it is not necessary for someone to have creat-ed anything as large as “Teach for America. ” If a young man or woman in China can bring 20 university students to teach the children of migrant workers in his own city, he or she would have achieved a success as great as that of Wendy Kopp’s, because to be successful in this case means to have changed the lives of a few, disadvantaged kids.

不仅如此，像温迪·科普那样开创一项事业也绝非易事，她做了大量工作，经历了多次失败，以极大的决心才成功地建立起了这样一个有将近４０００名员工的全国性慈善组织。但要想非常成功，并非要一个人建立像“为美国教书”这样庞大的事业。如果一个中国年轻人能够召集起２０名大学生来为他所居住的城市的农民工孩子提供教育的话，他就将获得像温迪·科普一样伟大的成功，因为成功地做了这件事就意味着改变了一些贫困孩子的生活。

I am glad to say that ever since I wrote my article about volunteering I have been in touch with many students around China who are fighting to improve the lives of the people in their society. These wonderful students are often discouraged by the difficulties they face, but they keep on fighting. Some try to create student organizations, others work on their own, and still others, like my former Tsinghua student, join government programs that allow them to express their love for their country in a useful way. All of them are working hard to make themselves better and to make their world better. It is not easy, but some of them will, like Wendy Kopp, be able to affect the lives of hundreds or thousands of people who need help. And whatever they end up doing, they will be teaching themselves a great deal.

我很高兴在写了那篇关于志愿工作的文章后，我就一直与全中国各地的许多学生保持着联系，他们正在他们的社会里努力改善着其他人的生活。这些优秀学生经常为他们所面对的困难而感到沮丧，但是从未放弃努力。他们中的有些人尝试建立学生组织，有些人独善其事，还有些人，像我在清华教的那个学生，加入了政府工程，以一种有用的方式表达他们对祖国的热爱。所有这些人都在努力使自身更加完善，使他们周围的世界更加美好。虽然并非易事，但他们中的一些人也会像温迪·科普那样影响成百上千需要帮助的人们。无论他们做什么，最终都会受益匪浅。