Project Mingde was established by the Department of Civil Engineering in 2004. It provides an open platform for nurturing students to acquire not only hard skills, but also soft skills, such as a sense of social responsibility, through participating in real-world on-going civil engineering projects in remote impoverished regions in China and other Asian countries. In April 2015, we received a request from Daping Village Primary School in Rongshui County of Guangxi Province to carry out a feasibility study for improving its learning and teaching environment.
There are 9 teachers and 230 students in the school. As many students lived in villages which might be a few kilometers away from the school, there are strong demand for on-campus accommodation. Due to lack of spaces, teachers could only live with students in the two-storey student dormitory during teaching weeks and only 80 students could be accommodated. As such, a classroom in the teaching block, which did not have any water supply and sanitation facilities, was used as the boys’ dormitory.
To address the accommodation needs for both teachers and students, Project Mingde helped demolishing the old kitchen in the teaching block and build a new three-storey teacher quarters. The construction was commenced in October 2016 and completed in September 2017. The building was named as JWDA Building and a handover ceremony was held on October 1, 2017. Local government officials, donor and architects from Shanghai, contractor, school principal, teachers, students, parents and members of Project Mingde from various faculties and departments attended the ceremony.
After the construction, 10 teachers moved in the new teacher quarter whereas the existing student dormitory could accommodate 40 more students. The living environment and condition has been improved. The classroom which used to be the boys’ dormitory would be converted into a multimedia room for teaching purpose in the next stage.
Teachers and students participated in this project attended the opening ceremony on 1 October
Front entrance of Daping Village Primary School
The new three-storey teacher quarters