When the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green was founded in 1872, it was East London’s first public museum. Today, we are transforming this beloved building into a new national museum of design and creativity dedicated entirely to children.

Relaunching later this year as Young V&A, the museum will be a place to imagine, play, create, debate and design. Young V&A will help children to develop abilities such as creative thinking, problem-saving ad collaboration through imaginative, hands-on gallery displays and creative programing for schools, families and community groups.

In a climate of growing inequality and reduced funding for the arts, it is vital that wed support young people’s creative development. We rely on your generous donations and are so grateful for your support. Whether you can give £25 or £25,000, all donations will help to complete this project.

£25 could buy books for the new Reading Room.

£75 could buy sensory materials to help bring the collection to life for young visitors.

£150 could conserve and display an inspirational object in the permanent galleries.

£5000 could help furnish the new creative studios in the Learning Centre.

•To pay by credit card, use the QR code, visit www.vam.ac.uk/appeal, or call 02079422905 to speak to a member of the Development team.

•Return a completed donation form or post a cheque directly to the museum or hand it in at the V&A Membership Desk or the Members’ Room.

•To find out about donating by bank transfer, making a regular monthly donation, or to make a larger gift, please email the Development team at appeals@vam.ac.uk.

【推荐1】Pengci (碰瓷) has been a disgusting matter for a long time. When driving on a road, if you see an old man or woman walking by the road, you may be afraid that he or she will hit your car on purpose, and then ask you for much money. Even worse, it has been reported that a pupil saw an old woman fall onto the ground, so he walked over to help her. But she grabbed him and said she was pushed down by him. Then she tried to extort much money from the pupil’s parents.

What a shame! How to deal with it? Our authorities have taken aim at pengci.

On October 14, three top judicial (司法的) organs issued a guideline to clarify the application of the law in extortion cases involving deliberately fabricated (捏造的) accidents or similar happenings. The guideline was issued by the Ministry of Public Security, the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate. For the first time, authorities have defined the pengci trick, in which people pretend they have been harmed by another party and then ask that party for money or property as compensation.

The guideline stipulates (规定) punishment for the two main types of pengci-fraud and extortion. Criminals who intentionally or negligently cause harm to others while carrying out pengci tricks may be charged with the crimes of intentional homicide, intentional injury, negligently (疏忽地) causing others’ death or causing serious injury to others, the guideline said.

The guideline also stipulates that whoever deliberately causes a traffic accident and blackmails the victim, which meets the relating provisions (条款) of the Criminal Law, shall be punished as the crime of extortion by blackmail.

According to this guideline, we can avoid being extorted by ill persons and warm-hearted persons can help those who really need help.

【推荐2】Countless people’s first jobs were part-time positions. This is partly because full-time jobs are more difficult to obtain, and part-time jobs require less responsibility in general. Employers like to hire people for part-time jobs, as they often do not require them to hand out benefits. My first official part-time job was working at my community college as a writing and English tutor.

I still got poor grades in English and writing in high school. It was only in college that I began to flourish (起色) with a pen and paper. By my second year of college, I was often getting “A” grades or hearing praise from my professors. I think this transformation happened due to my enthusiasm for written word, and this excitement assisted me in overcoming my difficulties.

What astonished me most in my part-time job was that the ESL (English as a second language) students were often better writers than the native people I tutored. I think this was due to the fact that they seriously studied English grammar, punctuation and composition, whereas the native speakers took English for granted. What also surprised me was how people-friendly I could be. In high school, I was mostly a loner, and found comfort in books, my chess board and my computer. But in college, I became increasingly outgoing through my job.

I believe this experience is not only a great step forward towards full-time office work, but it’s also taught me that I love teaching and interacting with people of various backgrounds. In addition, I’ve learned the joy of working around my own schedule. Through having several part-time jobs, I can say that this type of work allows one to be happier, healthier, and have a better outlook on one’s assignments.

【推荐1】Have you ever heard about “cyberbullying” ?This is a new kind of bullying. Teenage cyberbullies post lies and hateful things about other young people on the Internet in order to embarrass them and make them feel bad.

It is getting to be a serious problem, and it is spreading very fast. The victims don't want to go out or go to only school and avoid talking to everyone because they worry that people have already seen the lies on the Internet.

Teenagers bully other teenagers online, by sending insults or threats directly to them in emails or instant messages. Also, they spread hateful comments about a person through e-mail, instant messaging, or by posting on blogs or Web sites teenager often read.

A teenage student from Canada was physically bullied for years. Finally, people began to bully him online too, sending him hateful e-mails telling him no one liked him. He didn't know how to get away from the bullies, so he left school and isolated himself from everyone.

Another example is when a group of middle school students bullied a teenage girl and started sending her unpleasant messages about her physical appearance. They called her names online and said many things to hurt her. She was very badly emotionally wounded.

Some parents, teachers, and other adults are trying to stop it by talking to victims they know about. If victims can talk about these problems with someone, they can find ways to deal with cyberbullying.

Parents of students need to check and see what their children are doing online. If they see their children bulling someone online, they need to help their children understand that they are seriously hurting their victims and see that it is wrong.

Recently I read that thousands of students and teachers in Michigan attended a conference about stopping bullying. They all worked together and discussed ways to stop bullying in their schools.

【推荐2】A decade ago, at the end of my first semester teaching at Wharton, a student stopped by for office hours. He sat down and burst into tears. My mind started cycling through a list of events that could make a college junior cry: his girlfriend had left him; he had been accused of cheating in exams; he forgot to turn in papers by the deadline. “I just got my first A-minus," he said, his voice shaking.

Year after year, I watch in sadness as students go all for straight A's. Some sacrifice their health; a few have even tried to charge their school after falling short. All hold the belief that top marks are a ticket to best graduate schools and high-paying job offers. I was one of them. I started college with the goal of graduating with a GPA of 4.0. It would be a reflection of my brainpower and willpower, revealing that I had the right stuff to succeed. But I was wrong.

The evidence is clear: academic excellence is not a strong predictor of career excellence. Across industries, research shows that the connection between grades and job performance is modest in the first year after college and unimportant within a handful of years. For example, a Google, once employees are two or three years out of college, their grades have no bearing on their performance. (Of course, it must be said that if you got D's, you probably didn't end up at Google.)

In a classic 1962 study, a team of psychologists tracked down America's most creative architects and compared them with their technically skilled but less original matches. One of the factors that distinguished the creative architects was a record of grades. “In college our creative architects earned about a B average," Donald MacKinnon wrote. “In work and courses which caught their interest they could turn in an A performance, but in courses that failed to strike their imagination, they were quite willing to do no work at all."

Academic grades rarely assess qualities like creativity, leadership and teamwork skills, or social, emotional and political intelligence. Yes, straight-A students master large amounts of information and reproduce it in exams. But career success is rarely about finding the right solution to a problem—it is more about finding the right problem to solve. This might explain why Steve Jobs finished high school with a 2.65 GPA, J. K. Rowling graduated from the University of Exeter with roughly a C average, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. got only one A in his four years at Morehouse.

【推荐3】When you hear the word “birthmark”, you probably think of one of those black or brown spots that you have on your body. For me, it’s different—I have them on my lips and inside my mouth. I’m used to being asked, “What are those black marks on your lips?” When I tell people they’re birthmarks, they usually say, “That’s strange.” I used to consider them ugly. However, my mom calls them beauty marks.

In pictures, I used to hide my birthmarks by pursing my lips so I wouldn’t have to deal with people’s questions. As I was growing up, people wore me out with them. Some people would ask me the same questions even before knowing my name. In society I feel like we judge people by their looks before personality.

My birthmarks are caused by a genetic condition from my mom's side of the family. My mom’s mom has birthmarks on her lips, and my mom’s uncle and my uncle have some on their bodies. Every year I plan to have a procedure to remove them. But when imagining the process, I always get nervous and give up.

My cousin faces a similar challenge. She has a huge birthmark that takes up her whole arm. She’s never tried to hide it or change her appearance. Once, her grandmother told her that the birthmark looked extremely prominent and suggested that she should wear long sleeves more often. If my cousin had actually taken that suggestion, she wouldn’t be such a person as she is.

Inspired by my cousin, I am finally accepting who I am and now I don’t hesitate when someone asks me about them either. I say, “They’re beauty marks” and smile without pursing my lips.