If something works for some disadvantaged groups, it will inevitably meet more needs and achieve better results, which can also serve normal groups, so it must work for everyone. -- Xinyu Xiu

From Helen Keller in the childhood book "Three Days to See" to Gia in the recent hit "Godzilla vs. King Kong," you've heard a lot about this story. But to their world, there is still a strong sense of strangeness and alienation. It seems to have become the norm to label them as inspirational and strong. We sigh, and then stop asking. Perhaps because we have been used to looking down, looking up and staring, instead of looking horizontally, so it is difficult "to see".

We decided to start with a conversation!

Adhering to the concept of "Equality, exchange, integration", we launched the "To See" series of activities. This year, we plan to invite people who care about the mental disorder community to share their concerns, thoughts and actions, so that more people can "see" them. At the same time, we will carry out practical activities such as mental health workshops and volunteer services to turn our concern into action and bring more help to people in need.

To see them, to see a new corner of the world; See them, even if they cannot see them; See them, wish they were seen by more people.

Art brut is a related concept proposed by the French artist Dubuffay in 1945, mainly for the study of the artistic creation of mental patients. It should be emphasized that mental patients are only one kind of original artistic creation, and others are psychics and folk artists. In other words, we only use the identity of these creators to express. The creation of the original art may be unconscious, subconscious, away from the traditional culture, far from the current civilization. Most people who talk about psychopaths are surprised or have a different view of this kind of art in the first place, and it's important to note here that as an audience, we need to focus our attention on the work of art, not on who created it.

We visited Nanjing Art Brut Studio, talked with founder Guo Haiping, and created with artists.

The artists were shy at the beginning. But we did not tend to show sympathy, instead we admired their works and talked to them. They eventually opened themselves and began to smile.

The development of modern medicine lies in the treatment of diseases, and the significance of treatment is to improve life and make life beautiful and happy. Artistic creation alone cannot deprive them of the right to be treated. A more scientific approach should be to combine art and medicine to heal the split between patients and society and nature from the perspective of culture. Therefore, to pay attention to the artistic creation of mental patients, in addition to tapping the power of original art, but also to pay attention to the illness of mental patients, which is an academic study of ethics and morality.

The revitalization of rural education is not only the basis of rural revitalization, but also the intellectual support of rural economic development, rural cultural construction, rural governance system and governance capacity modernization, and also the requirement for the growth of new professional farmers. The development of rural STEM education (science, technology, engineering and mathematics education) is not only the embodiment of educational equity, but also an important starting point for training modern agricultural talents. It will help urban and rural education from extension to connotation direction, and then contribute to the modernization of agriculture and rural areas and the construction of a high-quality education system. However, the current urban-rural dual development thinking still exists. Many people believe that STEM education is only an elite education for a few people, and even produce one-sided views such as "who is qualified to be a scientist, who is good at science, and who belongs to the elite of the STEM community of practice." We are eager to break the barrier that keeping the kids from rural areas from STEM education.

Moreover, it's important to raise people's awareness of education in rural areas. According to the survey we conducted in Qinghai Province, many parents want their children to pass on their skills and carry on the family heritage instead of supporting them to go to college. So we worked hard to let children understand that they undoubtedly have the opportunity to study and work in the STEM field.

However, many schools or educational institutions in rural areas may lack sufficient resources such as teachers, teaching equipment and teaching materials. Through college students' volunteer teaching, educational resources can be shared between urban and rural areas. Volunteer teaching of college students can provide professional knowledge, new teaching methods and advanced educational resources for these areas, also stimulating the students' potential and self-confidence. According to Sir Ian L. Boyd, the resilience that must be built into some of the poorest countries, should be built upon self-confident people using open and shared scientific knowledge to pull themselves out of their misery.[1]

In July 2023, the members of Team ZJU-China, with their enthusiasm for rural education and ecological environment, brought a rich and interesting classes to the students of Minzu Middle School in Huangnan, Qinghai Province. Under the guidance of volunteers, students got in touch with the field of crop pest control and learned about cutting-edge synthetic biology knowledge. Moreover, they participated in the discussion of genetically modified food and sustainable development issues.

With the help of Dingding meeting (similar to Zoom meeting), the students "visited" the laboratory of the Biological Experiment Center of Zhejiang University, and learned some basic principles of molecular biology experiments in the explanation of experimental equipment. What we want to convey is that, as long as there is courage and enthusiasm for exploration, anyone is likely to make their own contribution to Please see the HER Digital Future Bootcamp for the detailed information.

It is estimated that by 2050, 75% of jobs will be related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Globally, only about 1/3 of students in STEM-related fields are female. China is the same. Girls in rural areas face a lack of resources for science and technology education, and we want to change that.

We also talked to Paula A. Johnson, a pioneer in promoting gender equality. Please see the Paula A. Johnson for the detailed information. After the talk, we realized that gender equality is not just boys and girls sharing equal resources such as education, it's also about people of all genders sharing the same rights to express themselves. Therefore, in the HER Digital Future Bootcamp, we gave girls an opportunities to express their own ideas of GMO and to picture a better way to control crop diseases.

HER Digital Future Bootcamp is organized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and aims to open up a new digital learning world for young girls aged 12-18 in China by working with academics, technology companies, public welfare organizations and social media around the world.

Please see the HER Digital Future Bootcamp for the detailed information.

Qinghai is a province with a high proportion of ethnic minority population (only Tibet and Xinjiang have a higher proportion of ethnic minority population), and 90 percent of the province is Tibetan autonomous area. There are five ethnic minorities living in the province, and except for the Hui village communities, the other four ethnic groups use Chinese and Tibetan in some areas.

The Tibetan and Mongolian peoples have their own languages and scripts. There is basically no Chinese language environment in rural pastoral areas, and Tibetan (Mongolian) and Chinese bilingual education is practiced in primary and secondary schools. The Tu nationality and the Salar nationality are distributed in the countryside, and they have language but no written language.

The difference of language life, language environment, cultural tradition and social background in pastoral areas is the decisive factor to promote bilingual education, and also the basis for choosing education mode, teaching mode and new generation training mode in pastoral areas.

Before this volunteer teaching, we found that some local high school students and most of their parents and grandparents could not speak Mandarin. This will be a great obstacle to our communication and teaching. So we learned some simple Tibetan words before we arrived. At the same time, we carefully learned about local religious beliefs and customs, and avoided talking about their taboos as much as possible. In the teaching process, when we find that there are communication barriers, we sometimes ask students who speak Mandarin and Tibetan to translate, which is very inconvenient. This also makes us think about ways to promote the progress of minority education. We believe that it is not only necessary to train Tibetan speaking Han Chinese teachers, but also to promote Mandarin in the local area, so that they can better integrate into China's development process. We hope that in the near future, students who have acquired knowledge and enthusiasm in our classes will return to the Tibetan region and devote themselves to education. But most of all, we want them to find something they're passionate about, no matter what the industry.

Team diversity and inclusivity play an important role in team work. Team diversity refers to the differences among team members in different dimensions, such as gender, cultural background, work experience, etc., while inclusivity refers to the acceptance and respect of these differences by the team.

Gender inclusivity

A lot of visible efforts have been made in stimulating diversity and inclusion and nurturing female leadership. Our team consists of 7 male members and 7 female members. Both our leader and deputy leader are women with admirable love and strength. There are stereotypes that women are not so good at mechanics. But the member contributing to the splendid design of hardware in our team is a woman.

Major inclusivity

Modern science is both highly differentiated and highly integrated, while intersectional science combines differentiation and synthesis to realize the integration of science. The intersection of disciplines is often the new growth point of science and the new scientific frontier, where major scientific breakthroughs are most likely to occur and revolutionary changes in science. At the same time, interdisciplinary science is a comprehensive and interdisciplinary product, which is conducive to solving the major complex scientific problems, social problems and global problems faced by mankind.

Our team consists of students from various majors, including Clinical Medicine, Ecology, Life Science, Plant Protection, Food Science and Engineering, Mechanics, Industrial design, Biomedical Engineering, Bioinformatics, etc.. This diversity contributes to inspiring thinking collisions and continuous innovation.

Love

In scientific research, we inevitably encounter difficulties and setbacks. And it takes more than willpower to keep going. Team building is highly valued, and we owe our success and harmonious atmosphere to it. When we build connections with each other, when we realize our responsibility for the project, when we feel a sense of belonging to the team, it's natural to dedicate to the research. We hope all future iGEM teams attach importance to team building, which undoubtedly contributes to work efficiency and most importantly, precious relationships.

In order to increase the accessibility of the iGEM ZJU-China 2023 Wiki for differently abled individuals, a variety of considerations were made. To make the web page more dyslexia friendly, we integrated a special dyslexia friendly mode for the site, which when switched (by clicking a button), follows several dyslexia friendly guidelines described by the British Dyslexia Association. This includes the use of Nunito which is a recommended sans serif font, in which letters appear less crowded. To further increase readability, an increased inter-letter spacing was used. Furthermore, the option of using a light mode background was influenced by it being more dyslexia friendly [2]. To make sure that the guidelines we follow increase readability, we also asked relatives with dyslexia to give us feedback regarding these changes and if the changes made it easier for them to read the content.

Following a similar rationale, our media team created their illustrations (such as logos and informative figures) with the intent of being as legible as possible with red-green colourblindness.