JIA District Committee
All the volunteers, as members of JIA (15,832 members in 2021), belong to a JIA District Committee.
JIA District Committee is a platform of the local volunteers to organize work camps in the local villages affected by leprosy independently and sustainably with local social resources. The procedure of organizing a work camp is as follows:
- Project team: District Committee setup a project team that consists of 3-5 volunteers. The team has experienced members and new members to learn from each other.
- Needs assessment: The project team makes preliminary visit to a village affected by leprosy for needs assessment and decides construction and/or the other projects to implement in the work camp, discussing with the leprosy affected villagers and the local government.
- Public education: Then, the District Committee holds public education activities like photo exhibitions, lectures, spreading flyers, etc. in the campuses of the local universities to promote scientific knowledge on leprosy and recruit new volunteers for the work camps.
- Training: Each project team provides training and orientation for the new volunteers, to share the contents of the projects, the division of works in the work camp, etc.
The project team implement the work camp for 1-3 weeks in the leprosy affected village.
Since the District Committee organizes plural work camps in a season at the same time, it has a management group with the function of project, financial, and information management, and administration, etc. as its needs. All of the operational staffs in the District Committee are volunteers.
There are 8 District Committees in JIA, composed of 24 universities in 8 cities in southern China, such as Guangzhou and Zhanjiang in Guangdong, Nanning and Guilin in Guangxi, Changsha and Jishou in Hunan, Yichang in Hubei, and Haikou in Hainan Province.
JIA Back up Team
Each District Committee has Back up Team (BUT). BUT is alumni association for the student volunteers to join after their graduation from the universities.
The function of BUT is, first of all, to transmit their soul and experiences of the activities to the student members and to encourage them. Many of BUT members have rich experiences in work camps and District Committee when they were students.
Another important function of BUT is to raise fund. JIA is like “a university whose tuition is for free”. If you admit the value of JIA to exist, you can pay “the tuition” after your graduation. Now more than 1,400 BUT members pay membership fee to JIA, and about 500 members are doing monthly donation at the same time. They also make use of their vocational experiences and resources working in different fields such as corporation, government, NPO, media, hospital, bank, agriculture, art, etc.to organize mini charity events to raise fund for JIA.
In these days, in the big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Wuhan, and Chengdu, that have no JIA District Committee, also setup BUT, since there are many JIA members working in the cities.
JIA Board of Trustees
Each District Committee has the right to send a representative to be the member of JIA Board of Trustees. That means, those who are working in the frontline can make decision for the whole organization. However, since the 8 representatives from the 8 District Committees are all student volunteers, they are lack of experiences to make decision for the organization in some cases. To cover the lack, 3 alumni members are also the members of the Board.
The responsibilities of the Board of Trustees are:
- To appoint a Secretary General of JIA who is also a member of the Board and takes charge of JIA Office
- To work out annual plan of the organization including budget
- To supervise JIA Office’s execution of the annual plan
- To evaluate the work of JIA Office
- To make internal audit
- To report the decision making of the Board and execution of JIA Office to Annual General Meeting of the representatives of the membership
- To present the draft of the direction of the development for upcoming year and get approved ent of Annual General Meeting
Annual General Meeting
District Committees have the right to send the representatives of the membership as the scale of the District Committee, and the representatives gather together in a place once in a year to hold JIA Annual General Meeting of the Representatives of the Membership (AGM). In AGM, JIA Board of Trustees makes report on their decision making for the past one year, and JIA Office makes report on their execution report to the representatives of the membership. The result of the evaluation on District Committees and JIA Office is also made public in AGM. JIA Board lastly announces the draft of the direction of the development for upcoming year, and the representatives vote for it. As the result of the voting, if the direction is approved by the representatives, then JIA Board can work for another one year with JIA Office.