A Study On Social Support For The Physical Exercises Of The Urban Vulnerable Groups In Gansu Province

At 21st century, China has stepped from the stage of developing a well-off society into a new era of constructing a harmonious society. As a sophisticated and systematic project, the construction of a harmonious society involves various aspects of constructions in terms of politics, economy and culture. Therefore, an overall balance is necessary. The concern of vulnerable groups constitutes a major subject in forming a harmonious society. In order to enhance the social justice, promote the social stability and ensure a healthy and orderly developed society, importance must be attached to the problem of vulnerable groups so as to create a stable society and to ensure a harmonious scene full of animation and dynamics. By vulnerable groups, we refer to a class or those who, driven in a plight for natural, economic, social or cultural reasons, live in a disadvantaged situation as a result of lower status, and are thus not able to release pressures as others do. Poverty is the essential characteristics of vulnerable groups. A large proportion of the vulnerable groups are physically or mentally unhealthy. Doing physical exercises is an effective way to make them healthy. Social support refers to the material, emotional, informational support and a sense of belonging to the society which an individual obtains from other people, communities, associations or government. "Those who possess insufficient social support often respond to others' comments pessimistically and have a sense of deficiency in interpersonal communication, anxiety and social isolation."l Therefore, they tend to be complaining, distressful, anxious and impatient and even lose confidence in life. Social support plays a significant role in increasing people's ability to adapt, improving their living standard, relieving them of negative feelings and making them healthy physically and spiritually.This paper, by means of questionnaire research, focused on the urban vulnerable groups in Gansu province and aims to conduct a research on the social support on physical exercises of them, hoping to reveal the present PE situation under its social support and some major elements influencing the obtaining the social support. The main findings are: 1 the present PE situation of urban vulnerable groups in Gansu province is not optimistic; 2 the PE of vulnerable groups still adopt informal traditional social support system, namely family support, and the social support from formal system is rather limited; 3 the system of social support is not perfected and relevant laws and regulations have not been formed; 4 due to less perfected social support system of Gansu, vulnerable groups have little access to social support.The present research, by exploring the construction of the system of social support of the urban vulnerable groups' physical exercises in Gansu, aims to provide scientific proofs for the social support of the urban vulnerable groups' physical exercises in Gansu and give some suggestions in this regard.