AVID VOLUNTEERS: Dong Ming (front) and members of the volunteer team named after her in Qiaokou District in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province (XIAO YIJIU)

Dong Ming, a 26-year-old woman in Wuhan City, central China's Hubei Province, has been bound to a wheelchair for 17 years. But that has not prevented her from helping and inspiring others. She has worked as a volunteer for many years and has contributed so much that a local district has named a volunteer team after her.

"I am physically challenged, but not mentally," Dong said.

Dong was born healthily to an ordinary family in Wuhan. At the age of 6, she was selected to join the diving team of Hubei Province. In 1995, Dong fell off a diving platform and the accident left her with high-level quadriplegia. She lost all feeling below her neck.

In the first six years after the traumatic accident, Dong could not move her body, nor could she speak. She did not regain the ability to speak until the 10th year following the accident.

Yet, in these 10 years, she managed to teach herself the primary and high school curriculum and also mastered English and Japanese.

"I could not utter any sound, so I read the texts silently; I could not hold a pen, so I wrote the characters in my heart," Dong said.

Dong did not give up and her perseverance was rewarded. In the sixth year after the accident, she gained some feeling in her upper arms, and she learned to type on a keyboard.

In 2005, she gradually got her voice back and decided to become a volunteer. She worked as a teacher in a special school, teaching hearing-challenged children to speak. After she became a registered volunteer, she has played various roles, working for public awareness campaigns for a smoking ban, environmental protection and compliance with traffic rules. "Helping others makes me feel happy," Dong said.

In the meanwhile, Dong has continued to improve herself. In 2007, she enrolled in the Open University of China, majoring in social work and psychology. Later, she became a certified psychological counselor.

After an 8.0-magnitude earthquake jolted southwest China's Sichuan Province on May 12, 2008, killing nearly 70,000 people in Sichuan and neighboring provinces, Dong worked feverishly with other volunteers in Wuhan, raising funds and organizing blood donations. Upon learning that quake survivors urgently needed psychological counselors, Dong convinced her parents to go to the disaster area with her, bringing along her income from writing and 10,000 yuan ($1,584) her parents had saved for her medical treatment.

In the disaster-hit area, Dong met a 7-year-old boy who lost both parents to the earthquake. The boy refused to speak to anyone after the earthquake. Dong accompanied the boy for six days until he began to speak. Dong also comforted more than 40 people severely injured by the earthquake.

During the Beijing Paralympic Games in 2008, Dong volunteered at the National Aquatics Center, the venue for the swimming competition nicknamed the Water Cube. She was highly praised for her remarkable performance and was honored as an "angel on wheelchair" by the media.

Dong not only serves as a volunteer herself, but also encourages others to volunteer.

In 2008, Dong set up a volunteer team and a charitable psychological counseling office with her income from writing. The office provides free services to many people including the unemployed and the lovelorn.

So far, her counseling office has received more than 5,000 visitors, more than 600 of whom subsequently joined Dong's volunteer team.

In late 2011, to recognize her volunteering service, Qiaokou District in Wuhan set up the Dong Ming Volunteering Service Team, which consists of more than 50,000 registered volunteers in 18 squads and 135 service stations.

Dong said that she sometimes felt her disability is a boon rather than a bane, because when others see that she is volunteering they have more incentive to do so.

(The article first appeared in Chinese on Xinhuanet.com)

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