By Robert Barron, Staff Writer

A few weeks ago, Richard Stephens was teaching English in a school on the edge of the Gobi Dessert.

Stephens is the organizer of an non-for-profit international cultural exchange organization Links International that teaches conversational English in Chinese schools. He had made trips to Asia since 1995 and organized Links International in 2002.

“The idea is linking one-to-one with our volunteers and Chinese schools,” he said.

The group works with local school boards and the Chinese government to volunteer to teach English. They have taught in more than 14 cities teaching thousands of students. English is required for all students by the Chinese government since the Chinese believe English is the language of the world and because many technical materials are written in English.

“Chinese is a beautiful language, but it isn’t a very good technical language,” Stephens said.

Links International has a good reputation with the Chinese government and volunteers pay their own way, often as much as $3,000 to stay in China for a brief period and teach conversational English to Chinese students. Their last trip the school in Wuhai invited them and offered to pay for their flight from Beijing to Wuhai, which is unusual. Wuhai is located in Inner Mongolia on the Yellow River at the edge of the Gobi Dessert.

Stephens, a retired Baptist minister, had done other types of ministries in southeast Asia and China when he developed the concept of Links to fill a need in China for conversational English teachers. Chinese students are very good at reading and writing English but do not understand conversational language. The teachers know they are weak in that area and do not teach it so Links Interna-tional fills an educational need in China.

“The schools treat us well. You get close to the Chinese people, closer than a tourist could. We eat in their homes, go to parties with them and go shopping with the teachers,” he said.

Lynn Xu is the only paid staff for Links International. She lives in China and is a frequent visitor to America, including Enid. Xu does all of the preparatory work for Links, then serves as a guide and interpreter for the volunteers while they are visiting.

Stephens has been in 40 nations but said he loves working with the Chinese people. He said the Chinese people treat the Links International volunteers like they are important people.

Most of the volunteers are Americans, but there have been volunteers from other countries. Anyone can volunteer and Stephens’ biggest job is finding volunteers.

“Our volunteers enjoy it. We have more fun than we should have,” he said.

The Links volunteers typically go to a school for three years and are starting to receive requests from all over China. A Chinese school typically will have 3,000 to 5,000 students. The importance of the English language to the Chinese government is the reason they are able to go.

“I’ve been going there since 1995 and the country has changed. It is booming economically and growing; their cities are as modern as anywhere. Economically they are a world leader,” he said.

Anyone interested in volunteering should call Links International in Enid at 242-5401.