Experience China 2011

APPLY NOW!

Travel to China this summer (August 15-September 1) as part of a SVC study and service tour. "Experience China" will take you to all the highlights you would expect -- Forbidden City, Great Wall, Terra Cotta Soldiers. But this will be travel with a purpose: you will visit a school for the children of Beijing's migrant workers, and roll up your sleeves to do volunteer work in a rural village in Sichuan province. Rural China (the "countryside") is often referred to as the "real" China. Join our team of faculty, staff, students and community members for a life-changing experience!

For more information and an application, visit www.skagit.edu/chinatrip, or contact Tour Leader Ted Maloney, 360.416.7774, ted.maloney@skagit.edu.

Highlights From Experience China 2010

See the article "Experience China 2010 – Diplomacy from the Heart", pages 6-7, from the January 2011 issue of SVC's Currents magazine describing our volunteer experience in the mudslide disaster area of northwestern China.

Highlights From Experience China 2009

In August 2009, five college students and one professor went on a life-changing visit to China through Skagit Valley College's "Experience China" tour. Our group visited world-famous sites like the Forbidden City, The Great Wall and the Terra Cotta Warriors. We brought donated supplies to an elementary school for the children of poor migrant workers in Beijing. But the primary focus of the trip was to assist villagers in the remote mountain areas of Sichuan's earthquake zone to rebuild from that May 2008 disaster. For 5 days we lived, worked and ate with the wonderful people of Jiang Jia Cun village, of the Jiang Minority, and learned about their lives and their incredible courage as they move forward each day in the wake of their tragic losses. We gained a first-hand appreciation of the enormous global gap between rich and poor, and what it means to make a difference in the lives of others, and the value of building personal relationships across boundaries of language, culture and politics.

Click here for a Flash slide show of our 2009 adventure.