Baoshan District Community Governance Institute Provides Field Education Courses to Its Students

 and Creates the “Baoshan Paradigm” for Community Governance

Baoshan District Community Governance Institute is a professional support platform, a platform for practices, an integrated platform for community education and community governance, and a platform for empowering multiple participants to take part in governance. By utilizing the existing community education resources, Baoshan District focuses on the requirement of modernizing the community governance system and capacity, encourages community leaders to learn and practice to improve their governance capacity by combining teaching with “governance”, and offers field education courses to students from communities.

Open and inclusive governance education satisfies government requirements and it is down-to-earth.

After walking into Baoshan District Community Governance Institute, you will see a unique “coffee school”. In the café named “Governance·Chat”, “children of the stars” are learning the skills of coffee making under the guidance of teachers and passing the “temperature” of education on community governance with cups of coffee.

Traditional classrooms in Baoshan District Community College were renovated into open and shared function rooms for community residents. Baoshan District Community Governance Institute is based on Baoshan District Community College, where community education and community governance are advanced in an integrated manner. The “three-layer and four-level” system of Baoshan District Community College has been established and put into operation. In Baoshan District Community College, community residents can sit down to read books, talk about family affairs while enjoying coffee, and take a stroll.

 “Experienced teachers” were invited to teach at the open Baoshan District Community Governance Institute. Believing in the concept of “everyone can be a teacher”, the Institute built a team of erudite “teachers” specializing in different areas of community governance. Scholars and professors from universities such as Shanghai University and Tongji University, professional media such as the Shanghai Channel of People’s Daily Online, social organizations such as Community·Neighbor·Home, and well-known senior community secretaries set up “expert think tanks” to provide theoretical support and practical demonstrations for innovative practices of community governance. The able personnel who are adept at community education formed a “team of backbone teachers focusing on community governance”, and 27 outstanding teachers took up their posts. Veteran workers from social organizations created a “teaching group on governance”, improved their skills for teaching governance during practices, and transformed into community “governance masters”. Senior community secretaries established a demonstration platform of governance practice for outstanding Party members, volunteers, “heads of group buying groups”, and “leaders of buildings”, in an effort to make more common citizens become “competent teachers”.

In addition, the party-masses service centers in 12 towns and 577 community-level party-masses service stations across Baoshan District set up their distinctive “governance parlor” to facilitate Baoshan District Community Governance Institute to provide services to all communities in the District. The network system of Baoshan District Community Governance Institute that integrates educational practice functions and spreads governance ideas is gradually coming into being.

Governance courses involving practices and training should be both useful and easy to use.

In the past, community education mainly centered on personal morality and hobbies. How can we transform the traditional community education courses to encourage students to develop the habit of participating in governance with the help of their hobbies? Different types of “expert workshops” at Baoshan District Community Governance Institute offered an amazing answer with Baoshan characteristics.

The knitting club was renamed the “knitting studio”. The president and teachers of the club link many people with their knitting skills, and work as “core experts” to educate and guide students to participate in creating vibrant buildings, care for the disadvantaged groups in their communities, and discuss the topics of co-governance. The Kids’ Chamber next door applies Tao Xingzhi’s educational philosophy of a “small teacher” system to community governance to encourage children to inspire their parents to care about their neighbors and empower more and more residents to take part in governance while taking courses.

Practice is crucial to community governance. In the “Immersive Training Classroom” established by Baoshan District Community Governance Institute, communities’ “small renovation projects”, installation of charging piles, the election of the property owners’ committees, installation of elevators, renovation of residential parking areas, and other common thorny problems become “mock exam” questions for the students. After confirming their identity through the “community role cards”, the students simulated a variety of practical meetings such as round tables, mobilization meetings, coordination meetings, and hearings. Meanwhile, experts and teachers observed and guided the students through a “single-sided screen” and offered them suggestions in real time. Under the immersive experience model of “simulated exercise-expert guidance-repeated correction”, community leaders’ ability to work with the masses, capability to deal with emergencies, organization and coordination capacity, and competency to resolve problems have been dramatically improved.

Apart from the training courses, actual governance activities were also held. The super-large community of Jinqiu Garden is beset by some challenges, such as insufficient property management and a long battle line of COVID-19 prevention and control. The Party organization of the community contacted experts, responsible departments, the property owners’ committee, and the property management company on the spot to work together to handle the problems. The members of the Party organization taught the students and made explorations simultaneously, conducted a beneficial exploration on establishing the regular mechanism where Party members deeply participate in community governance and pair to play their co-governance roles, and achieved preliminary results. Twenty-six beautiful community transformation projects in Baoshan District are now the teaching sites of Baoshan District Community Governance Institute. Teachers and students will carry out field research and practices, as well as listen to experts’ suggestions, secretaries’ plans, residents’ advice, and social organizations’ ideas to tackle the problems and explain doubts during the governance teaching activities.

Baoshan District Community Governance Institute renders customized services to empower the secretaries of Party organizations of communities and villages and common citizens.

During Shanghai’s fight against COVID-19 this year, a large number of heads of group buying groups, captains, group leaders, community experts, and in-service Party members who reported to the communities played an important role in community governance. To “retain” this new force of community governance and further stimulate the new talents to satisfy the needs of community residents, “continuing education” on community governance was offered. During the event of the “New Experts’ Governance Salon”, the heads of group buying groups held in-depth brainstorming discussions on the theme of “how to continue to run the community group buying groups to serve communities and how to participate in community governance”. In response to the problems raised by the heads of group buying groups, Baoshan District Community Governance Institute joined hands with relevant government departments to come up with solutions, guiding them to provide “group buying of governance” instead of “group buying of products”. Currently, regular services such as the service of delivering courses by heads of group buying groups and shared services have come into being.

The “new force” needs to be cultivated, while the “key forces” should be strengthened. To develop the ability of the secretaries of Party organizations of communities and villages, who are the “key mainstays” of the “main force”, Baoshan District Community Governance Institute offers the most urgently needed courses. It provides several special courses, including “The New Challenges Posed by Community Epidemic Prevention and Control to Community Governance & the New Tasks and Targets of Community Governance after the Epidemic” (the course focuses on bettering the secretaries’ comprehensive capacities), “Improving Community Leaders’ Organization and Mobilization Capability”, and “Improving Community Leaders’ Ability to Deal with Emergencies and Their Coordination Capacity”. The Institute also provides the course “Post-epidemic Psychological Adjustment” to assist the secretaries to improve their mental health. At present, 38 special courses on enhancing governance capacity are offered to 575 secretaries of Party organizations of communities and villages and over 4,000 “leaders of the two committees” of communities and villages across the District, improving the secretaries’ competency to mobilize the people and build consensus.

Under the leadership of the CPC Baoshan District Committee, Baoshan District Community Governance Institute aids community teachers to develop into governance masters, offers training courses, and encourages community members to conduct governance practices. The Institute is facilitating community residents to be the principal participants of community governance through more diversified activities and with a more open attitude, allowing the community spirit to grow during the consensus-building process and creating the “Baoshan Paradigm” for community governance.