Dozens of volunteers certified for project

Twenty new consulting centers and more than 100 volunteers were certified on May 24 for a public welfare project run by the China Youth Development Service Center to promote psychological health among youth.

The Shi Qian Bai Wan Project, initiated by nine ministries in 2006, has been providing physiological consultation to teenagers with mental problems such as Internet addiction.

Although there are no official statistics on the number of Internet addicts in China, some Internet addiction specialists estimate the number will be as high as 24 million, most of them 12 to 18 years old.

The project has been setting up 130 offices in cities across China, recruiting volunteers, and training them to provide free psychological consultation to teenagers and their guardians, as well as to teach teachers and parents on how to prevent teenagers from getting addicted to the Internet.

To date, the program has trained 4,800 Internet-related psychological counselors. By the end of 2015, the project will have 280 offices and 15,000 volunteers, the organizing committee said.