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Student volunteers sought for Beijing Olympic games
By Nancy Armour (The Associated Press)
COLUMBIA, Mo. - Organizers of the Beijing Olympics are looking for a few good students.
The Beijing Organizing Committee is recruiting 300 students primarily from the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia to work as volunteers at the Olympic News Service next summer. Sun Weijia, BOCOG's director of media operations, was at the University of Missouri on Thursday to introduce the program. "The Olympic Games is not the Olympic Games for the host country. We will try to host the games as a party for the whole world," Sun said. "To be able to provide quality news content to the media, we think it is good to have a collaboration with schools in terms of Olympic volunteers." The Olympic News Service acts as a press agency for the games, providing news about events, athlete biographies and other information about the Olympics. International media rely on it for quotes, results and event schedules. In the past, organizers have relied on English-speaking volunteers from their own countries. But Sun said that wasn't really an option for Beijing. "China is not an English-speaking country. It is difficult for us to find the very qualified students," Sun said. "The second thing is the quality of service we would like to ensure. At the Athens Olympic Games ... there were some complaints from the international media." To avoid similar problems in Beijing, the International Olympic Committee suggested that BOCOG consider recruiting volunteers from English-speaking countries. Because so many Chinese universities already had exchange programs with U.S. schools, Sun said it was a natural fit. BOCOG is pairing with 13 universities, five of which are in the United States. In addition to Missouri, Iowa, Ithaca College, Emerson College and North Carolina are participating in the program. The schools will select the students and train them so they're familiar with the jobs they might be doing and the various Olympic sports. The students will go to Beijing about a month before the Aug. 8 start of the games to do their onsite training. The Texan strives to present all information fairly, accurately and completely.
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