The opportunity to provide hope for young Chinese children with broken hearts is one of the many missions that the University of Oregon Chinese Philanthropic Leadership Association strives towards.
Members of this organization seek different service projects and apply skills from the U.S. to China. One of the ways to obtain funding for projects is through fundraisers.
The university recently hosted one of the first events, The Voice UO.
The Voice UO was the first of its kind, and CPLA hopes to make this event annual.
The top ten singers of campus performed on May 18 in the EMU Ballroom. It was also an opportunity for students to learn what CPLA is and about their purpose.
While audiences enjoyed the performances of the night, CPLA also had a successful fundraiser, on their biggest service project yet.
“The event was a singing competition where we welcomed all the students and the community,” Shu, the vice president of External Xiaolei, said. “It was also an opportunity to fundraise our biggest project, Spread the Love. We believe that our members that contribute in various service projects take what they learn and apply it back to China.”
Spread the Love, is a project that takes members from CPLA to help influence the lives of those in China and give them a reason to see beyond the limits they may encounter.
Particularly, Spread the Love members work with children and take them beyond their village to let them see the big cities in China. Members hope that by working with children and providing love and support, they can influence the children to build dreams and enrich their knowledge of the outside world.
“I’m new to this organization and Spread the Love will be my first project to help out in,” CPLA program group member Zixiong Yin said. “Charity is a good thing and this organization gave me an opportunity to furthermore help the lives of others. I was impressed with last years project and I wanted to be part of it. I hope that on this project I can build leadership and no one really knows what it’s like and I want to experience it myself.”
By the end of the night the winner of the competition was Sasha Rawlinson, followed by Zuo Yue and Xinxin Zheng.
“We hope that audiences enjoyed the show and that they got a sense of what we do,” CPLA President Qian Wu said. “We planned this last term and it was a complete random idea. We believe this was a great opportunity and we hope to bring that back and continue to spread our work through our projects.”