Two American young women founded a non-profit organization committed to enabling people in China to lift themselves from poverty. Being able to help people by using your skills must be great but I can not help but wonder how the rich people and government of China feel when they read about this.
美國2年輕女子設中國窮人銀行, 能以專長幫助人最棒.但不禁好奇中國富人和政府的感覺.
Meredith May, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, April 13, 2009
Wu Dinghong needs $600 to buy materials for the shoe repair business he started on a street in China’s Sichuan province. Suzhen Xie needs $450 to expand her hog pen. Aodao seeks $600 for a dairy cow.
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Casey Wilson (left) and Courtney McColgan in San Francisc…Zhang Rong in China’s Sichuan province got a loan through… View Larger Images
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Entrepreneurs in rural China are pulling themselves out of poverty with the help of a new micro-credit Web site formed five months ago by two 25-year-olds in the Bay Area.
Casey Wilson of Oakland and Courtney McColgan of Menlo Park founded Wokai.org, modeled after the popular Kiva.org microfinance site. Donors choose from a list of borrowers online and make tiny donations. They can follow their money through online photos and updates of the person they fund.
Wilson and McColgan met in a postgraduate Chinese language program at Tsinghua University in Beijing, realized they shared the same interests, and came up with Wokai – which means “I start” – during a St. Patrick’s Day party in 2007.
They raised $50,000 from friends and family, amassed an army of volunteers and, through word of mouth, cocktail parties and social networking, opened Wokai chapters in Seattle, New York and San Francisco.
Since they launched their site in November, 275 Wokai donors have donated $25,000 to 60 rural Chinese entrepreneurs, helping them open noodle stands, duck hatcheries and grain stores.
Wokai is catching on fast in San Francisco, with its large Asian population, tech-savvy culture and philanthropic spirit, said Alice Wu, who leads 45 volunteers and 12 interns for Wokai’s San Francisco chapter. Volunteers help with the business plan, Web site design, publicity and online marketing.
Most of Wokai’s donors are in their 20s, have some family or business connection to China, and work in charity or finance, Wilson said.
The Wokai Web site also features pictures and short stories from the people who donate. Casey, whose father donated and then posted a note on Wokai saying how proud he was of his daughter, is now working fulltime to help keep Wokai running.
“It feels like the Obama effect,” Wilson said. “People are following his lead to get involved, and word is spreading through Facebook and Twitter and YouTube.”
Wilson recently gave a speech at Google, the video was posted on a Chinese blog, it went to YouTube, and now a New Yorker magazine writer is following her for a possible story.
“The biggest thing I have to explain when I talk to groups is that China needs help,” Wilson said. “People think it’s a wealthy superpower, and it is growing rapidly, but not in the rural areas where there are 737 million people living on $1.50 a day. They can’t afford to send their kids to school, so there’s little hope of eliminating poverty in their families.”
Wu gives at least $5 to everyone who requests a loan on Wokai. At any given time, there are 15 loan requests on the site. Wilson and McColgan keep the requests to a manageable number so that each person has a better shot at getting their entire loan funded.
“It’s an easy pitch for me,” Wu said. “I never liked the pure nonprofit mind-set where the charity comes in and rescues you – I’m a fan of microfinance where each side puts in a little work.”
When Wilson gave a donation to help a mother in China open a noodle stand, she printed up T-shirts for San Francisco Wokai volunteers that read, “Help Mrs. Wei Open a Noodle Stand.”
The pitch worked. Now Mrs. Wei is feeding her family.
