Italy can learn from Chinese youth club, says politician

Matteo Orfini visits an exhibition at a youth club in Beijing, Oct 23, 2014. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The Community Youth Club in Beijing provides great assistance to the city's youth, migrants and people with disabilities, and Matteo Orfini, president of the Democratic Party of Italy said it is a good pattern to learn from for his country where there are no such organizations.

A delegation led by Orfini, mostly from the Young Democrats, the youth wing of the Democratic Party, visited a club in the Xicheng district during their ongoing China tour.

The club is part of a project named "Community Youth Club" and initiated by the Beijing Communist Youth League in 2010. The project has set up about 200 community youth clubs in the city, aiming to organize regular activities and provide practical training courses for the youth.

The delegates visited every activity, including ping-pong, a baking course and an artifacts exhibition.

They praised the training the club gave to the disabled when seeing artifacts made by them.

"There are youth organizations in Italy, and we also attach great importance to the training of young people but there are no organizations like the community youth club in Beijing which helps those in needed among the youth," Orfini said. "What they have done here is really worth learning for us".

The Italian delegation is in China to learn about economic reform and youth development with the club visit the third leg of their tour.