明日之光Open Arms 团队一年回顾

2020年11月，美中下一代基金会明日之光公益奖平台正式成立并得到华人社区的积极响应。平台的职责之一是传播各个团队的事迹和经验，共大家学习，交流和参考。今天我们收到Open Arms 团队对他们一年以来服务社区的总结。和我们刊登的绝大多数明日之光团队的文章一样，这篇文章是孩子们自己写的，再用翻译软件翻译成中文。这个过程本身对孩子们就是一个锻炼。希望这支优秀团队再接再厉，更好的帮助特需孩子，在做公益的同时，锻炼自己的各项能力。与此同时，我们也希望广大家长和孩子们积极参与他们的活动，支持他们，帮助他们，和他们一起成长！

Open Arms One Year Review（团队一年回顾）

Written By: Isabella Cui

Revised By: Alexis Liu

On May 29th, 2021, Open Arms officially opened with the 8 founders, 7 other volunteers, and 14 participants. Now, we just celebrated our first anniversary, and we’re proud to say that we have more  than doubled in size. This past year has been an amazing experience for all of us, and we have been expanding and improving our organization to make this year even better.

2021年5月29日，Open Arms的八位创始人、7位志愿者和14位特需孩子正式开始第一次聚会。现在，我们刚刚庆祝了一周年，我们很自豪地说我们的规模扩大了一倍多。过去的一年对我们所有人来说都是一次了不起的经历，我们一直在扩大和改进我们的组织，以使新的一年能发展得更好。

Last year, we held our special events once a month. Each time the venue was overflowing with people, and we gained multiple regular volunteers. As a result, we decided to host weekly events this year to accommodate more people. Knowing how many people we could already impact, we wanted to expand our reach to more people m ore often. When we first started weekly events, we worried we may not have enough participants or volunteers，but instead we had positive responses with many participants and volunteers coming each week. As of this month, we already have over 30 participants and 40 volunteers in our organization, double what we had last year. Because so many people registered, often we had to reject some registrants.

去年，我们每月举办一次特别活动。来的人数一次比一次多，多名固定的志愿者加入我们。因此，我们今年开始举办每周一次的活动，可以接纳更多的志愿者。 也可以更好地服务特需孩子。 看到我们可以影响到很多人，我们希望能更经常地去帮助更多人成长。当我们开始每周活动时，我们担心没有足够的参与者或志愿者，但每周都有许多参与者和志愿者前来，我们得到了非常积极的回应。截至本月，先后参加过我们活动的志愿者有四十多人，而我们先后服务的特需孩子也有近三十人，达到了刚开始时的两倍。因为报名人数太多， 我们常常不得不拒绝一些义工或参与的孩子。

Following these weekly events, this year we also implemented a report system – where volunteers write a summary of what they did each week in exchange for volunteer hours. These reports help us track each participant’s progress, as well as informs us of their behavioral quirks and personal needs. Through reports, we, as an organization, can also learn of places we should improve, and ones that are satisfactory.

在这些每周活动之后，今年我们还实施了一个报告系统——志愿者在其中写下他们每周所陪伴的孩子的总结。这些报告帮助我们跟踪每个参与者的进度，并告知我们他们的行为特点和个人需求。通过这些报告，我们作为一个组织也可以了解到我们应该改进的地方，以及那些令人满意的地方。

Besides this, we’ve also been improving many other facets of Open Arms. We recently designed our very own volunteer t-shirts, which makes it much easier to recognize volunteers at our events. We have done some work on our social media, and are in the process of designing a new website with our own domain. With that, we’ll have a lot more new features, such as individual log-ins and profiles, a donation page, and a spotlight page. On our social media, we’ll be promoting our organization, posting announcements and events, and posting about our progress!

除此之外，我们还一直在改进Open Arms的许多其他方面。我们最近设计了自己的志愿者T恤，这使得在我们的活动中识别志愿者变得更加容易。我们在社交媒体上做了一些工作，并且正在设计一个拥有我们自己域名的新网站。有了这个，我们将拥有更多新功能，例如个人登录和个人资料、捐赠页面和活动亮点页面。在我们的社交媒体上，我们将宣传我们的组织，发布公告和活动，并发布我们的进展！

In the coming year, we plan to extend our reach to different groups of people and communities，and raise awareness of the special needs community to the locals. The programs will include creating high school branches to reach out feeding elementary and middle school special needs kids. Another program is peer education. We will use resources from Organization For Autism Research to reach out to local communities to raise awareness of autism. We also registered for an Autism Speaks Walk event. Please join us or support us for the walk. Here is our team link： http://act.autismspeaks.org/goto/OpenArmsWalk

来年，我们计划将服务范围扩大到不同的人群和社区。并提高人们对特殊需要人群的了解和接纳。这些计划将包括在高中创建分支俱乐部，以服务学区内中小学生特殊需要的孩子。另一个项目是关于自闭症方面的知识普及。我们将利用自闭症研究组织的资源在社区做一些讲座，以提高对自闭症的认识。我们还注册了自闭症演讲步行活动。请加入我们或支持我们的步行。这是我们的团队链接：http://act.autismspeaks.org/goto/OpenArmsWalk

We hope in the coming year, we can accomplish most of these goals/ideas. But to accomplish these, we do need your support. If you want to be a regular sponsor for Open Arms, please email us at openarms2021.org@gmail.com. We will display your business logo or business card on our website. If you just want to give one time donation, please Zelle to openarms2021.org@gmail.com. If any middle/high schooler is interested in volunteering or participating at Open Arms, we would be delighted to have you join us! Please fill out this form to be a volunteer with us. ( Join Open Arms as Volunteer ). If you want to know more information about Open Arms, please email us at openarms2021.org@gmail.com. We welcome you with open arms!

我们希望在接下来的一年里，我们可以实现这些目标/想法中的大部分。但要完成这些，我们需要您的支持。如果您想成为 Open Arms 的常规赞助商，请使用电子邮件联系我们（openarms2021.org@gmail.com）我们将在我们的网站上展示您的企业标志或名片。如果您只想一次性捐赠，请 Zelle 发送至openarms2021.org@gmail.com 。如果任何初中/高中生希望加入我们志愿者队伍， 请填写此表格成为我们的志愿者。( Join Open Arms as Volunteer )。如果您想了解有关 Open Arms 的更多信息，请发送电子邮件至openarms2021.org@gmail.com。我们张开双臂欢迎您！