On January 3rd, the mobilization and pre-departure training meeting of “Practice Projects in Rural Areas for Graduate Students” in 2020 winter vacation was held in CUEB Academic Report Hall of Boxue Building. The meeting was themed as “Gathering People's Will and Power to Win the Battle Against Poverty.” Cai Bin, Deputy Dean of the Graduate School and Deputy Director of the Division of Graduate Student Affairs, presided over the meeting.

After self-application and school review, a total of 174 practice projects with 704 graduate students were approved, covering 22 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions.  

As the representative of the outstanding team of “Practice Projects in Rural Areas” in 2019, Sun Jing, a graduate student of 2018 College of Business Administration, shared her experience and summarized her feelings as “no fear of any difficulty” and “no regret with innovation and joy”. She suggested more communication with instructors, combination of students’ majors with social hotspots, the analysis of research results and implementation of recommendations, so as to better transform the research fruits into practical projects.

Hu Zhaoyue, a graduate student from the School of Finance in 2019, said that as a young man in the new era, we should contribute to China's poverty alleviation. The group members have conducted preliminary data collection, taking Tangxian County, a key county for poverty alleviation and development as the research site, taking policies of spurring local industrial growth as the main research direction, and conducting practical research through interviews. At the same time, they expected to experience the poverty alleviation work and enabled local people to acquire a stronger sense of fulfillment. 

Fan Hejun, Deputy Dean of the College of Business Administration, awarded the flag to the project team representative.

Zhou Mingsheng, Dean of the Graduate School and Director of the Division of Graduate Student Affairs, stressed that the year 2020 will be the year to accomplish building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and it is also the final year for the 13th Five-Year Plan. Therefore, it is of great significance to carry out the “Practice Projects in Rural Areas”. Zhou Mingsheng put forward three requirements to the students: the first is to master related policies and share the fruits of poverty alleviation; the second is to engage in social practices to test their theory; the third is to gain more knowledge and contribute to academic research. Meanwhile, Zhou also instructed students to pay attention to safety and communicate with teachers in time when they encounter problems.

In order to help students better grasp the methods of social research and understand the actual situation of China's poverty alleviation work, the meeting specially invited the project sponsor, Professor Fan Hejun from the College of Business Administration, the State Council's third-party assessment team leader for poverty alleviation, Prof. Shen Hongliang from the School of Economics provided pre-departure training to the students.

Fan Hejun emphasized that the original intention of the project was to closely follow social hotspots, take root in grassroots practice, and improve the practical ability of graduate students. He summarized the purpose of the project with “nine one” proposed by President Xi Jinping. At the same time, he inspired students to think about research questions in a “360-degree thinking” way to put forward multiple solutions to the research issues. In addition, he also introduced the process of this project and the format of the report.

Sheng Hongliang introduced poverty alleviation in the speech themed as “targeted poverty alleviation: the strategies to get rid of poverty and to realize the well-off of people” about why we do it, what is the current situation and what we still need to improve. Sheng told students that young people should dedicate themselves to poverty alleviation and understand the magnificent efforts of those people who devoted themselves to this course. Young people should also keep three issues of agriculture, rural areas and rural people in mind and rationally ponder over the future of rural areas and rural revitalization.

Some school instructors, teachers of Division of Graduate Student Affairs and representatives of graduate students who participated in this project attended the meeting.