On Apr. 9, 2014, a plane from Angola landed at Beijing International Airport. One of the Angolan passengers typed happily on his Facebook “北京欢迎我” （Beijing welcomes me once again!）as he was walking out of the plane. The passenger's Chinese name is Qin Bili. Last year, Bili graduated from School of Public Policy and Management (SPPM), Tsinghua University, majoring in international development.
After seven years of living and studying in Beijing, Bili chose to return to his home county to contribute to Angola's development. Now he is part of the Social Action Department of CITIC Construction in Africa. One of the major projects he works on is to build a BNVS (Bainian Vocational School) in Angola. On this one-week trip to Beijing, he visited the BNVS in Beijing Municipality and Henan Province to learn more about those schools' education concept, in order to apply it also to the BNVS in Angola adjusted to the specific condition of Angola. On his trip, Bili emphasized over and over again that the goal of international development is to improve people’s lives and that he would like to start it with better education.
Qin Bili began to study in the MID program of Tsinghua's SPPM in August 2011. At the same time, he volunteered in BNVS Beijing. Together with his classmates, he did voluntary English teaching in the school on a bi-weekly basis. This volunteer experience in a BNVS impressed the CITIC Construction in their interview with Bili and consequently he was selected to work in the Social Action Department.
But already before this job, he decided to devote himself to build a school in rural Angola, in order to improve the conditions of the primary school in the community where his father was born. The school building has no roof and the walls are eroded and damaged. For this reason, the pupils can only have classes under a tree and can't go to class at all when it is raining. Now Bili and his wife try to raise fund for the school in their free time. He said that the funds will be used to repair the building of the school and to buy books and teaching materials for the pupils. Bili believes that this project is possible, but only with the personal commitment for action. According to Bili, many young people of his community move to the big cities and then return to do something for the community, like his father. But often they just say so, without actually doing anything. Putting his commitment into action is what studying international development at Tsinghua has changed in him, and has made him different, says Bili.
On Apr. 16, Bili took his return flight back to Angola. He bought a lot of Chinese specialties for his relatives. Qin Bili left with the words “I will miss China.”
