In response to the UNESCO World Heritage Volunteers(WHV) Initiative, WHITRAP Shanghai and Tongji University’s Beautiful Nostalgia Charity Team jointly launched the "Youth Heritage Volunteers Action Plan - Ripple Action" in 2019, and the "Ripple Youth Forum" is regularly held every December to promote the fruits of the action, expand social attention, build a cooperation network and attract public participation. The themes of the first two forums were "Water Stories of Hometowns" and "Youth Creativity, Linking Homeland" respectively.

The 1st Ripple Youth Forum

The 2nd Ripple Youth Forum

The 3rd Ripple Youth Forum

In early 2021, Beautiful Nostalgia, together with WHITRAP Shanghai, launched the 4th Ripple Action - "Scenes of theStreets/Villages". And in September of the same year, together with Shanghai Design and Promotion Center for Urban Public Space, Beautiful Nostalgia launched the “Community Renewal Seeds” youth volunteers cultivation program which encourage young people to walk into the communities around them and to explore the unique community culture.

In the report section of Ripple Action, Ms. Peng Jing, founder of Beautiful Nostalgia, delivered a keynote speech with the theme of "Action Arousing Ripples in Community", explaining the background , objectives, action path and the results achieved of Ripple Action in the past two years. Peng Jing pointed out that Ripple Action has focused on three dimensions: cultural awareness, capacity growth, and community network, which aims to help young volunteers build a cultural heritage knowledge system, enhance their capacity to carry out long-term heritage conservation actions, and gain continuous support from community networks. Through years of project iterations, Ripple Action has established a "six-step" action path: practice opportunities, minimal actions, empowerment courses, community partners, display platforms and continuous incubation, which in order to help young volunteers solve the difficulties that they may encounter in their practices. In the Ripple Action - "Scenes of theStreet/Village", a total of 282 youths participated in the action, producing 57 copies of Local Chronicles, 21 cultural creative works, and 48 activity reports, directly affecting 815 people. 

In the SUSAS Seeds of Community Renewal report section, Ms. Long Miao, the project leader, shared the practice outcomes of the youth volunteers in the 2021 Shanghai Urban Space Art Season with the report on "Youth Power: SUSAS Volunteers in Community Renewal". Three outstanding youth volunteers from SUSAS also shared the team's practices of exploring the communities: Wu Ruofei (a senior majoring in urban and rural planning at Tongji University) built a two-way interaction between youth and the community through three community actions; Zhu Weikun (a second-year post-graduate student majoring in urban and rural planning at Tongji University) combined theory with practice to suggest that the youth should take the first step towards community action; Shi Ziyu (a sophomore majoring in Sociology at Tongji University) presented what they found in the fieldwork with the description of team's in-depth research on the interaction between public space and people in Cao Yang community.

In the round-table discussion, Ms. Liu Zhen, Program Specialist of WHITRAP Shanghai, acted as the moderator, and Ms. Cui Jiaying, co-founder of Beautiful Nostalgia as the co-moderator. Ms. Chen Min (the person in charge of the urban space micro-renewal program of Shanghai Design and Promotion Center for Urban Public Space), Ms. Shao Yong (Professor in the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University), Ms. Zhong Xiaohua (Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Tongji University), Ms. Xue Yang (the person in charge of Community Issues of Shanghai United Foundation), Ms. Cai Shujin (Deputy Secretary General and Head of Chengdu Office of Shanghai GuoFeng Charity Foundation), Mr. Lu Yongfeng (Director of Ant Community Building Development Center), Ms. Yang Xu (Director of Shanghai Pudong Community Service Center), Ms. Wang Xi (Head of Urban Historic Landscape Innovation Research Platform), Ms. Peng Jing (Founder of the Beautiful Nostalgia), and Ms. Xu Xiaoman (teacher at Shenzhen Wutong Primary School) joined together and disscussed the more possibilities for youth action in the communities. Guests combined their professional perspectives and practical experiences to give valuable suggestions on community participation for youth.

In the future,Ripple Action program will enhance its professionalism and systematization by gradually improving the library of experts and peer tutors, build bridges between youth and heritage and community by promoting cooperation with communities and local social organizations,so that the youth volunteers can enter the communities and creat connections with cultural heritage and the communities to gain a new perspective on the community, hometown, and the value of their own majors.