At the age of 18, Michael Hermann from Dortmund, then part of the Federal Republic of Germany, decided to become an intational volunteer. Since 2005, he has worked in China on poverty alleviation and dis-ease control in Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, as well as Chongqing Municipality in southwest China, as the representative of the Federation for Associations Connected to the Intational Humana People-to-People Movement (FAIHPP) in China.