Inspired and Energized

My weekends are more fun, more active and inspiring than my working days. I participate in Rotaract Shanghai, co-organize a Social Enterprise Business Planning workshop series at Fudan University, spend time with my parents, read and catch up with friends.

This past weekend was particularly good. At the social enterprise biz planning, we started to present various ideas around various issues: aging population, education problems, environmental problems, social innovation, etc. Some of us was creative and down-to-earth with their ideas and plans. It would be cool to join them and start my own social entrepreneurial experiences.

Then I met 2 young entrepreneurs who are running an education business - sending high school students all over China to NYC, US for a mini UN assembly conference. Meaningful and profitable. I especially admire their courage to do it on their own instead of pursuing a conventional career path. One of them was MCP China 2 years after my term. One of them gave up his i-banker job after 1.5 years.

I might be in touch with an extremely small population of youth in China who are courageous and exposed. Anyhow, this is a very encouraging signal. With AIESEC rolling out bigger and bigger in this country, with the social entreprise business planning workshop series rolling out in more big cities in China, we can make a difference in this generation!

New Trends for Poverty Alleviation

What to do when you build a school but the locals don’t see education important? What to do when you give poor people jobs then they continue to be alcoholic and gamblers? How can we make poverty reduction work effective?

I have recently finished the book ‘Banker to the Poor’ by the Nobel Peace Price Laureate 2006 Muhammad Yunus and went for a study trip to Manila for their famous national movement – Gawad Kalinga. There are a few similarities crucial to successful poverty reduction work that I drew from both practices.

1. First of all, we need to transform the values of the poor (or create buy in). They should not be seen as beneficiaries or recipients. They need to believe and feel empowered that their life can be improved significantly.
2. We need to create a community of the poor who can share the new values and support each other. Social/peer pressure can help them to persevere in changing their lives.
3. We need to address more than one problem at once: education, health care, information system, housing, livelihood, etc. Because if they become financially improved, we don’t want to see them falling back to their old life style if they were into gambling, drinking, violence, etc. Instead, they should go into more and more areas to overall improve their entire being.

I hope this can give some inspiration to the CSR projects of the companies to make the communities they operate truly sustainable.

Ironically Regulated!

The Ministry of Civil Affairs has recently given specific instructions to some ‘NGOs’ to not have Chinese nationalities in the club. I cannot help finding this particular action very ironic.

1. We all know NGOs officially don’t exist in China due to lacking registration process. Then how can the MCA regulate an entity doesn’t even exist?!
2. For those NGOs who will follow such a ‘specific instruction’, they are probably not those who aim at pushing for changes. Thus from the government’s point of view, it should be harmless for them to involve the Chinese. On the other hand, those NGOs who are determined to serve their mission wouldn’t necessarily be bothered by such an order. So what is the point?

How do TVs in buses reflect our culture?

I started to notice that I get very very annoyed by the TVs on buses lately: the sound is very loud, people on the bus cannot choose what to receive, there is too much propaganda and bullshit going on. I cannot help to think: we are a civilization being told what to do and how to obey for 2500 years. This TV is really just a natural channel of spreading more propaganda.

I have more reasons to take subways now! =)

Migrant School Visits

With Rotaract, I visited 2 migrants schools at the outskirt of Shanghai yesterday. The visit intriguer-ed some more investigation on google about it. Interestingly, on the google page, the western media and the Chinese media say the opposite things regarding the migrant school issue in China.

Through the visit yesterday, I learnt a few interesting things:

1. One migrant school can make about 10-20k EUR profit a year, given the fact that a small amount of kids cannot pay the tuition (100 EUR/year) some times. A school has about 750 kids which makes up to about 70k EUR of annual revenue, assuming some kids cannot pay. The school is making such a big profit while: 1) kids are provided with limited facilities to have sports games; 2) teacher vs kids ratio is about 50:1 and most classes have about 50-60 students. I start to wonder the intention of those people funded the schools, why teachers are not paid and trained properly and why kids cannot enjoy better facilities?

2. Migrant schools are not allowed to offer education beyond primary school level, as a government's regulation. So if they want to pursue a higher degree, they have to go back to their home province, while their parents are being migrant workers working away from their hometowns. Obviously, local governments wouldn't want to share the burden of citizens not from their territories. As long as China wants to base its economic growth on mass production, there will be migrant workers. Thus there needs a solution towards their kid's education because: 1) they deserve equality to access opportunities; 2) education is probably the best way to move a person out of poverty entering middle class in China since it gives the opportunity to go to a big city, study in a good university and find a well-paid job.

Clearly removing the issue itself is beyond Rotaract's reach though we can improve the situation a little bit. I am personally frustrated not being able to tap into the fundamentals of this issue, like many other issues in China. This once again has shown that: a centrally governed change is not sustainable. We are constantly stuck in the structural problems while making shortsighted moves. We intend to achieve economic growth and poverty alleviation through mass production. Mass production leads to a huge rush of migrant workers, which leads to a huge disparity of development levels between the coastal cities and inland areas. How can our billion population fit into the 10-20 developed cities? And how long can China maintain its world factory position in order to maintain the poor as cheap labors?

I will propose my thoughts on the solutions next time.