Beijing Women's Federation

The Beijing Women's Federation holds a garbage sorting forum on September 8, inviting women community Party secretaries to share their opinions.

A forum focusing on garbage sorting was held among female community Party secretaries on September 8. It was sponsored by the Beijing Women's Federation (BWF) and the Beijing Association for the Development of Social Service for Women and Children.

Shang Yanhua, Party Secretary of Meilong Sancun Village, Lingyun Sub-district in Shanghai, Yang Chunru, Party Secretary of Jiaodaokou Community in Beijing, Xu Benliang, an expert in public welfare, and Zhang Hongyu, an expert in environmental protection, were invited to the forum. Yin Na, Vice-President of BWF, delivered a speech.

During the forum, Shang spoke on the theme "community-level self-governance based on collaboration guided by the Party building work, experience of garbage sorting in Shanghai". Starting from the existing methods of garbage sorting, she vividly outlined the six-in-one "project-based" operations being carried out by communities and social organizations to promote the reduction of household garbage at its source. Meilong Sancun has made efforts in terms of mobilization of social resources, organization and implementation, professional supervision, and volunteer training in promoting the implementation of garbage classification, and achieved remarkable results which have been recognized by all.

Yang introduced, in detail, the work of Jiaodaokou Sub-district, which is based on the core functional area of the capital, and how it carries out differentiated garbage sorting from three aspects — changing ideas and strengthening awareness, carefully observing and discovering, and focusing on joint efforts and absorbing resources.

After the presentations of the two community Party secretaries, the forum opened to a round-table discussion. Guests discussed how social organizations conduct effective garbage sorting. Xu emphasized that community-based garbage sorting must have clear goals and focus on the effectiveness of the work. Communities and social organizations should take projects as their starting point, turn good activities into good projects, connect with more community resources, develop community self-organization, solve problems through projects, and strive to achieve their objective.

Wang Xiaofei, head of Ren'ai Social Work Office in Changping District, Beijing, a professional social work organization, shared her practice and research on the construction of garbage sorting volunteer teams, combined with her experience in community work.

During the meeting, Xu and Shang were invited by the Beijing Association for the Development of Social Service for Women and Children to be its special consultants to provide guidance for their work. At the end of the forum, a ceremony was held to appoint new members of the association. With more and more members, the force for women and children's services is growing.

The one-day forum was fruitful. From the perspective of social collaboration, female community Party secretaries in Beijing and Shanghai discussed garbage sorting and shared experiences and ideas, laying a foundation for the association's work to gather social forces in the sector of women and children's services to take part in garbage sorting work. The BWF will keep on cooperating with social organizations in innovative ways to promote garbage sorting and community-level governance.