350,000 apply to be 2008 Games volunteers
(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-03-01 14:08
More than 350,000 Chinese have applied to be volunteers
at next year's Beijing Olympics and Paralympics in the first six months of the
recruitment campaign, organisers said on Thursday.
Volunteers are vital to the successful running of the
Games, performing functions from helping athletes and the media to directing
crowds at the venues.
Beijing plans to have 70,000
volunteers for the Olympics, which open on August 8, 2008, and 30,000 more for
the Paralympics in September the same year.
"The
applicants include 180,000 students and teachers of Beijing Universities, 80,000
Beijingers from other sectors and close to 100,000 from other provinces and
municipalities," said a report on the Web site of the Beijing Organising
Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG).
Beijing
also hopes to have 400,000 "city volunteers" posted around the Chinese capital
during the Games and more than a million "social volunteers", the report said.
The next step of the recruitment
campaign is to solicit volunteers from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau as well as
the rest of the world.
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