Gao Xin, Helping Make a Difference to the Lives of Deaf People
Gao Xin is a first-year graduate student specializing in interpretation at CFLC’s Department of English Language and Literature. She also earned her bachelor’s degree in English language and literature from CFLC. Committed to helping deaf people, Miss Gao established Xiamen Hope Interpretation Services Co., Ltd. during her undergraduate years. Her company, which offers sign language interpretation services to the deaf, earned her the 2014 China Award for Undergraduate Public-Interest Business Startups and the second Chinese Youth Volunteer Service Project Competition, as well as the commendation of XiamenUniversity.
Miss Gao is an all-round student. In 2016, she was honored as one of XiamenUniversity’s “10 Most Distinguished Graduating Students”, and one of Fujian’s and Xiamen’s “10 Most Distinguished Members of the Communist Youth League”. She has an excellent academic record. In her undergraduate years, she won multiple scholarships. She was the winner of the second prize of the COMAP Mathematical Contest in Modeling & Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (MCM/ICM) and the third prize of Fujian part of the fifth All-China Interpretation Contest. For her excellent academic record during her undergraduate years, she was admitted to her current graduate program with a waiver of the entrance examination.
While an undergraduate student at CFLC, she was secretary of the CFLC branch of the Communist Youth League and deputy president of the CFLC Literary Society. She was named a “Distinguished Student Cadre of Xiamen University” for three times. She took advantage of her language skills to provide volunteer services for the community and for various events, earning herself a place among XiamenUniversity’s “Top 10 Volunteers”. She was also the head of an undergraduate volunteer team providing social assistance in the countryside which was honored as an “Outstanding Volunteer Team of Fujian” and one of the “Top 10 Summer Volunteer Teams of Xiamen University”.
Miss Gao joined the CFCL Sign Language Interpretation Association during her freshman year, and over the following year, she came into contact with many deaf people in the local community and became determined to help make a real difference to them.
After a series of field trips, she and her fellow students prepared a detailed plan for establishing a service firm dedicated to the assistance of the deaf. In May 2014, with the support of the Xiamen Association of People with Disabilities and the Siming District Association of the Deaf, she founded Xiamen Hope Sign Language Interpretation Services Co., Ltd.
Her company releases volunteer service information for deaf people through websites and WeChat platforms and provides simultaneous sign language interpretation services for the deaf to facilitate their communications and their access to community services. She and her fellow students regularly organize tours and hold lectures for deaf people, and they also conduct regular publicity campaigns to encourage more members of the public to engage in support programs for deaf people.
Miss Gao and her fellow students create a instantly, mutually understandable communication link between hearing people and the hearing-impaired world and help give deaf people a voice.
Apart from her company, Miss Gao provided hundreds of hours of volunteer services during her undergraduate years for various important events in Xiamen. She was a volunteer interpreter for the APEC Ocean-Related Ministerial Meeting, the ninth Global Confucius Institutes Conference, the China International Fair for Investment and Trade, the Workshop of Program Directors of Confucius Institutes, and the celebrations for the 95th Anniversary of Xiamen University. Her volunteer language service for a British trade mission earned her the commendation of the China-Britain Business Council.
During the summer breaks of 2014 and 2015, she and a number of other CFLC students offered free English lessons to students at ZhubaSchool, which is located in a remote corner of Xiamen’s Tong’an district. They also ran a summer camp providing immersion English lessons for the city’s elementary and secondary school students. Moreover, she and her partners have provided free English tutorials for more than 50 non-English majors planning to take the College English Tests Bands 4 and 6.
