Stepping Stones is a 3A level nonprofit organization registered and based in Shanghai, China. The organization was founded in 2006 in order to organize volunteers to teach English in Shanghai's primary schools for migrants in response to requests from schools’ principals, which struggled to provide a reasonable standard of English teaching to their students.
English is one of the three core subjects in the Chinese school curriculum, and the one that poses most challenges to rural and migrant children. The majority of migrant children do not make it to senior high school, and only a small handful are able to make the grade to attend university. Improvement of basic education is the key to helping children from rural areas to attend senior high school and university, and thereby improve the future prospects of rural families. English proficiency is therefore the biggest differentiator between urban and rural Chinese children, and this above all perpetuates the widening gap in educational and employment opportunities.
Shanghai benefits from a large expatriate and local English-speaking community, many of whom are eager for meaningful volunteering opportunities. Stepping Stones was founded to match this rich resource to a real need in the community. Stepping Stones recruits, trains, coordinates, and supports hundreds of volunteers to teach thousands of students in more than 30 migrant schools and community centers in Shanghai and Zhejiang province and more than a dozen of schools in rural China (Jiangsu, Anhui, Henan and Zhejiang provinces).
Stepping Stones is proud that classes taught by our volunteers have been proven to increase students exam results, improve their confidence and interest in English, better prepare students for their key examinations, and expose youth to cross-cultural programming and the virtues of volunteerism.
