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Outreach
This section of our website is under development so not all the links may be active yet. Thank you for your patience.
The Schoolhouse reaches out to the community around us and to the larger society in a number of concrete ways as a means of fostering our social missions. This page lays out our active undertakings and contains links to more detailed information.
- Exchanges
- Home Visits & Village Tours
- Sustainability Curricula
- Sustainable Foods Program
- Schoolhouse Publications
- The Schoolhouse Fellowships
- Community Service
Exchanges
The Schoolhouse helped establish and continues to support the Sister Village relationship between Mutianyu Village and Shelburne Falls, Massachussetts, the home town of one of our partners, Julie Upton-Wang. We believe this to be the first such partnership between small villages in China and the U.S.A. Click here for a summary of the program and to learn how you can participate or email us for more information at info@theschoolhouseatmutianyu.com.
Home Visits & Village Tours
The Schoolhouse worked with the village governments in Mutianyu and Yingbeigou to set up a program of non-commercial home visits. The participating village families receive a token honorarium for each visit and no home is visited so frequently that the experience becomes simply passe for the residents, who tend to be the elderly (and lonely) residents at home during the day.
We arrange the visits and conduct tours as well as provide interpreting service for qualified educational institutions on a pro bono basis when we can fit into our over-all business requirements. We have helped primary, secondary, university, and graduate student programs in Beijing and from around the world to make these visits. The students usually have never had an experience like this ever before so in addition to seeing the Great Wall when they come here they have the chance to gain insight to a rural community.
We are also happy to help tourists with village visits and home tours but we charge for the arrangements and for guiding and interpreting.
Sustainability Curricula
The Schoolhouse is developing a series of English language curricula relating to sustainability to provide a starting place for educational institutions and teachers who wish to augment their existing programs. We also hope that community groups and parents may find the curricula helpful.
Read Introduction to The Schoolhouse Curricula
The curricula include comprehensive teaching guides with links for more information as well as activity materials. We have not copyrighted the curricula and welcome anyone to make use of them freely, though a credit to The Schoolhouse and the authors would be appreciated :). We have tried to provide credits for information and materials gathered from other sources and if we have missed any we welcome the authors/owners to bring to our attention and we will address.
Three programs aimed at the primary school level have already been completed by our 2009 intern, Audrey Gueho, who hails from France. These programs have been oriented to the seasons and plantings in our locality in the Huairou District of Beijing in the hills under the Great Wall at Mutianyu but we feel they can be easily adpated for use in other sites and locales. Be creative! The perfect is the enemy of the good enough!
Download Discover Organic Gardening
Download From the Kitchen to the Garden: Understand Composting and Waste Recycling
A new program aimed at middle school students is under the development.. The first class, based on a social geography-oriented trek up to the Great Wall followed by thought-provoking discussion activites, was also created by Audrey Gueho. The name of the class is Hiking to Mutianyu Great Wall: Men, Territory, & Sustainable Development.
Download Men, Territory, & Sustainable Development
Sustainable Foods Program
The Schoolhouse is actively engaged in a formal program to increase the sustainability of the foods we use through composting and recycling, growing our own ingredients, educating and qualifying local suppliers, developing fair trade inputs, making dishes homemade from scratch, serving non-endangered species, offering alternatives to animal protein, and sharing our learnings in the local community and with our customers. Get a sense of how we're doing by visiting our blog.
From March to September 2009 Pietari Sajaniemi, from Finland, was an intern with The Schoolhouse at Mutianyu. He came here without knowing any Chinese and lived with our team right in the village. His university major was sutainable tourism. Although he had never been a farmer we assigned him the main project to organize our approach to sustainable foods.
It turns out this program is actually very complicated and requires continuing input and discipline. Pietari took the lead to help us define sustainability, determine our goals, get a 2009 garden planned and planted, and inventory our resources. He worked with our local farmer Li Fengquan and our executive chef Randhir Singh and conducted weekly program meetings with involvement of many managers and team members.
Most importantly Pietari created an organized program with clear responsibilities so that within the context of our little operation under the Great Wall we have a real chance of keeping the vision and sustaining the program itself. We will do our very best to carry on what Pietari helped us get going. We are happy to share the entire program manual below as this is the working document that we are using internally to train and to carry on.
View the Schoolhouse Sustainable Foods Program Manual
During his tenure at The Schoolhouse Pietari Sajaniemi also conducted research on sustainable tourism. After returning to Finland he completed his honors thesis with The Schoolhouse as a case study. The thesis is over 100 pages long and contains a thorough literature review that we found helpful to put our programs at Mutianyu in a worldwide perspective. Pietari also reports on his interviews with village residents and their feelings and comments about our enterprise. Not a rigorous survey but certainly of heuristic value. We would like to thank Pietari for his dedication and insight.
Schoolhouse Publications
The Schoolhouse underwrites the publication of books that contribute to our social missions. The books are for sale and may also be provided gratis for educational or charitable purposes when we are able to fit this into our over-all business requirements. Click here to learn about The Schoolhouse books.
The Schoolhouse Fellowships
The Schoolhouse Fellowships The Schoolhouse awards fellowships to outstanding individuals who are established artists, scholars, or professionals. The fellowships provide 30 day residencies with lodging and meals for the fellow and a life partner here at the Great Wall. The purpose is to provide a low key environment for fellows to create and think. Each fellow is expected to work on a project of some sorts (e.g. creating works of art or participating in a seminar on an agreed topic). Fellows are asked to offer a public lecture or exhibition on an agreed topic/theme. We hope and expect that the fellows will broadly contribute to social, economic, or ecologicial sustainability.
We welcome proposals for fellowships. The number of fellowships awarded varies from year to year and we reserve the sole right to acccept or decline proposals as well as to change or modify the fellowships at will. Please contact jim.spear@chinaboundltd.com if you are interested in a fellowship or would like to suggest a worthy recipient.
Community Service
The Schoolhouse donates a day of labor by our staff each July to Mutianyu Village on our annual Community Service Day. We welcome visitors to participate and provide a free lunch to everyone who lends a hand. We keep the Canteen open on that day and donate our gross receipts for lunch service to the village charity fund.
The Schoolhouse organizes and hosts the Bohai or Bust bicycle ride the first Saturday of each April as a non-profit community activity with all proceeds used to benefit elderly residents of our township. We appreciate the generous support of many co-host and sponsor enterprises and organizations as well as enthusiastic volunteers. Come out for an early Spring adventure in the fresh air at Mutianyu!
On the first Saturday in September we also organize and co-host Slow Food Saturday with the Beijing Convivium of Slow Food as a not-for-profit activity. Slow Food Saturday is a harvest festival that celebrates the ideals of the Slow Food movement and the traditional foodways and customs of our villages nestled under Mutianyu Great Wall. Many other local businesses, the park, the village committees, and our neighbors have joined us to make this festival a very special event. Foods are for sale in participating restaurants but there are many no-charge activities such as demontrations, tastings, performances, and so on. Volunteers and the help of other businesses as sponsors are the not-so-secret ingredient that help us succeed.