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Record Number of Volunteers for Beijing Olympic and Paralympic Games

Volunteers for the Beijing Olympic and Paralympic Games are now in the final countdown as Games Time approaches, this week details about how their Volunteer Programme is progressing were published.

During Games-time, 100,000 volunteers will provide direct services for the Olympic and Paralympic Games at more than 30,000 positions. An additional 400,000 city volunteers have been recruited to provide information consultation, language interpretation and emergency aid services at 550 posts throughout Beijing and around Olympic venues. The first batch of city volunteers has been at work since July 1, 2008, helping out Olympic family members, spectators, tourists and a large number of city residents, Liu said.

Although volunteers of the Beijing Olympic and Paralympic Games come mainly from Beijing, there are also a number of volunteers that have been recruited from other Chinese provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, as well as from Hong Kong, Macao and Chinese Taipei. Some volunteers have even come from abroad.

During the period from August 28, 2006 (when volunteer recruitment was launched) through March 31, 2008 (when enrollment concluded), a total of 1,125,799 people applied to be volunteers for the Olympic Games; 908,334 of these applicants also requested volunteer work to serve the Paralympic Games. The number of volunteers enrolled to work for the Beijing Games has set a record in Olympic history: a total of 74,615 volunteers have been recruited from 98 countries and regions. In the six co-host cities of Qingdao, Hong Kong, Tianjin, Shanghai, Shenyang and Qinhuangdao, there will be 7,600 competition volunteers.

Systematic training has been conducted for all of the Olympic and Paralympic Games volunteers, including general, professional, venue and position training. Training methods include distance, concentrated and practical techniques. There are six programs and one thematic activity included in the volunteer program, namely the Competition Volunteer Program, City Volunteer Program, Social Volunteer Program, "Towards the Olympics" Volunteer Service Program, Pre-Games Volunteer Program, Transformation of the Beijing Volunteer Work Legacy and the Thematic Activity of "Smiling Beijing." Such a formula is catered to allow for different time allocations for different people, so that best-fit volunteer situations may be found.