BEIJING — A group of 82 recent graduates from universities in Beijing set off on July 21 to serve as volunteers in the country’s remote and underdeveloped western regions, according to the Central Committee of China Communist Youth League (CCYL).

They departed Beijing onboard a train heading for Urumqi in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, marking the start of the “Go West” program for in 2017.

Nearly 80,000 college graduates from 1,876 universities applied for the program this year; 18,300 of them were selected to take part.

The “Go West” program, which was jointly launched by the CCYL, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security in 2003, aims to send university graduates to perform volunteer work in education, health, agriculture and social management sectors in the country’s western regions for a period of one to three years.

Over the past 15 years, the program has sent more than 270,000 young people to over 2,100 county-level regions in central and western China.