Jingtong Yu - Gold Award

School: Valley Catholic Middle School
Category: Teens (11-15)
Hours: 117

Jingtong is an eighth grader at Valley Catholic Middle School. She often participates in volunteer activities because she feels like, at a time when almost everyone is focused on trying to absorb everything from their community, there are not enough people who are willing to give back to the community. This is why she thinks community service is incredibly important, as it helps us connect with our community better and without it, the community will quickly fall into a state of decline.

This is a mural she painted with the help of others, a three-panel mural, with different themes in each one. The first is pandas hanging up lanterns in Chinatown, the second is the pagoda of Chinatown, and the third of a traditional Chinese Dragon Dance on the Lunar New Year. The reason she started this mural was that she participated in many volunteer activities in which we cleaned up the streets of Chinatown. She noticed that while Chinatown is a beautiful place, it was not very well managed. And through many news and media feeds, She has also heard about how Portland Chinatown was becoming the poorest and the most dangerous place in the city of Portland. While she was making efforts to make Chinatown tidier, it wasn’t exactly beautiful. So she decided that she should make a mural that could make the streets more colorful. Over three months, and a little more than a hundred hours, she completed this mural. With the help of some of her friends, she bought the boards, primed, sketched, and finally painted the entire mural. Overall, she is really satisfied with the final product, and she thinks it served its purpose.

Oregon Chinese Coalition is proud to join the President of the United States in recognizing the volunteers who consistently take the time to make a difference in the lives of others. Therefore, it is a great honor to present the President’s Volunteer Service Award (PVSA) to Jingtong Yu.