Level of difficulty: Intermediate Cost to attend: Free for students (alumni pay for their own moderately priced dinners)
Project: A Yale Club in Shenzhen, China, annually arranges a day-trip for visiting Yale students along with local Chinese students, to leading Chinese companies. All the students are part of a regular exchange program between Yale and Lingnan (University) College in China, organized in part by Yale-China.
Yale and Lingnan students after hot pot dinner
Lead time: one month Date of event: March 14, 2018 in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. The first day-trip was started in 2016. Similar day-trips have been planned each subsequent year. Ongoing: annual event
Resources:
10 volunteers worked on different parts of the trip, 3 hours per each part, and total 30 hours.
Yale and Lingnan students at Tencent headquarters
Permissions required: Arrangements must be made with the companies being visited, in this case Tencent, BYD, and DJI.
Funds required: Alumni paid for their own food for the dinner, around 200RMB for each. The Yale Club pays for the students’ Hot Pot dinner as well as the expenses for the students in the day trip in Shenzhen. The president of our Club (Kevin Ye) donated a sum of money when the club was founded, which defrays these costs.
Results:
35 participants including students and volunteers.
Why a success? The day trip significantly enhances an important, but smaller scale Yale University exchange program. Yale undergraduate students experience first-hand some leading Chinese companies. The program brings the Club a close connection with Yale-China association, and engages local alumni who work for the visited companies.
Background: The exchange program is officially called the Lingnan (University) College Yale Exchange Program, or in shortened form the L(u)CY Exchange Program. Yale students collaborate with Chinese students from Lingnan, who first travel to Yale to learn about social entrepreneurship and technology alongside the Yalies, then during spring break, the Yale students travel to China to work with the Lingnan students to create a social solution or project based on the year’s theme.
Yale and Lingnan students at Build Your Dreams
Details: One year (2018), the trip visited three world famous tech companies located in Shenzhen, and concluded with a hot pot dinner. During the entire trip, alumni volunteers accompanied the students, as hosts and guides.
Alumni involved with the Yale Club of Shenzhen, helped create a close relationship with Lingnan and Yale-China Association. Each year the Club first tentatively decides on sites to be visited. Then contacts Yale alumni who work in these companies, to see if the visits can be arranged. These alumni have cooperated actively and helped design the trip content. Some of them volunteered to do presentations about the company and its products. During the day-trip other alumni served as guides to give insightful talks. At the dinner, recent Yale graduates who relocated to Shenzhen shared personal experiences in entrepreneurship and transitioning to South China.
Possible improvements: Choose from a greater range of companies, and not just high-tech ones.
