SIGNATURE WORK
CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 2022

The main theme of my signature work is the influence of COVID-19 pandemic on youths in China. There are two components: the two experiential learning activities (Blossom Project and the Heros’ Legacy Program) and the research project. After the COVID-19 outbreak happened in China, I initiated the Blossom Project to support frontline health workers’ children. There were 140 volunteers participating in this project and we received positive feedback from children, health workers and society leaders alike. As a Student Experiential Learning Fellow, I had an internship at Shenzhen Henghui Charity Foundation and helped children whose family members sacrificed their lives when fighting COVID-19. I became the peer mentor for one girl in Xinjiang and our mentoring relationships will last for many years. Because of my experiences in the two activities, I realized the negative consequences of COVID-19 on youths. To provide evidence-based recommendations to policymaking, I decided to carry out a research project. I participated in the Parenting Across Cultures research and used the second-hand data collected in Chongqing to measure life events and their associations with youths’ wellbeing when confronting the COVID-19. There were 115 families in total participating in both 2018 and 2020. I conducted both the descriptive analysis and the multivariate linear regression analysis. The results revealed that youths tend to decrease their affective well-being when COVID-19 pandemic happened, and such consequences became much more severe for youths of low socioeconomic status. But life events and gender do not have significant relationships with youths’ affective wellbeing.