Casey
Photo from Ningxia
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Casey
Photo from Ningxia
Posted at 08:33 PM in China Microfinance | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Courtney
I recently had a dinner party at my house for "China ex-pats" - Westerners that have lived in China and now have returned to the normalcy of Western civilization. I enjoy getting people with the China connection together as the group gets tight pretty quick. I guess its because people feel an instant bond with those who have undergone the same experience. Only a handful of people in this world can relate to devouring late night jian bings (AKA "pancakes from heaven " as my roommate would call them), visiting the creepy yet still interesting bar scene of San Li Tun over and over again, and heading to work on the sardine-packed Beijing bus at 8am. Got to love China...
At the dinner party, I met Leslie Forman. Leslie lived in Shanghi and Jiaxing for 18 months in 2006 and 2007. She now works for Papillia, a startup that provides online communications and fundraising software for non-profits. Leslie brought up the idea of a video for viral marketing. But what was different about her idea from ones mentioned in my previous entry is that her video has no pictures and no spoken words. It is just text and music.
So where did the idea come from?
Leslie showed me her inspiration: www.thegirleffect.org. The video is part of a web campaign for a non-profit called the Girl Effect that aims to increasing access to microloans for women. Take a look at their 2-minute video below.
Pretty awesome, right?
I think this video rocks for three main reasons:
Leslie and I have started brainstorming on a Wokai Effect ourselves. According to Dan Heath, we need to take the Wokai Fact Card (Download wokai_fact_card.pdf) , boil it down, and come up with a 2-minute pitch about Wokai. And that pitch has to be simple enough that anyone can understand and want to get involved.
So how do we get the everyday Joe interested in helping a poor person in China?
Leslie had a late night brainstorming session with a whiteboard and her cell phone (see below). If you can't make out her scribbles, I will do my best to summarize: China is developing at a rapid pace, especially in urban areas. Rural areas are not experiencing this same development. As such, rural inhabitants are moving into cities to find work. This is causing stress on resources, social tension, and uneven development. Wokai reverses this process by offering opportunity in rural areas. With a loan, a rural inhabitant can start a business, grow the community and create local-economies in rural China areas. This allows for more even growth, creating a better China and a better world.
I like this idea. But I question its universality. Does your everyday Joe understand this story?
Ask yourself: Why would my neighbor care about China? I think one may be able to find the answer to this question by taking on the macroview first. I think one could argue that a more stable, socially responsible, equitable China means a safer and better world in general. I think all would agree with that statement.
Now from that, how do we make the micro? Whats our girl? Whats our hook?
Posted at 01:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)
Casey
I had an interesting lunch yesterday with Paul Clifford, Director of Planning & Strategy at Cisco’s headquarters in China. Paul is heading up a $50 million fund through the China Development Bank(CDB) where Cisco and the CDB use their respective resources to implement a new, technology based, model of development.
Posted at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Courtney
In a recent Christian Science Monitor article, Chinese NGOs Struggle to Grow, Melody Zhang, director of the Chinese branch of Children's Hope International said: "many NGOs don't have a mission statement nor keep track of how they spend donor money." She then went on to talk about the lack of transparency with NGOs in China as a serious problem that needs to be fixed.
Wokai inadvertently provides the transparency that Madame Zhang is calling for. From the moment you log on to Wokai, you are able to choose directly who your donation goes towards. Then, after you have committed your funds, Wokai provides you with monthly update about how much of the loan the borrower has repaid. Every quarter we provide users with a news update on their borrower - what's new in their life and whats going on with their business. At the end of the year, your funds are repaid to your My Wokai account. At that point you are able to re-allocate the funds to a new borrower at that same microfinance institution.
I this kind of transparency is really going to help us attract donation dollars heading to China for two reasons:
And in regards to China, the issue of transparency is of the utmost importance. Since 1999, the number of non-profit organizations has grown from 6,000 to well-over 300,000. While this growth is remarkable, it is not always the most sound. Many of these organizations have weak managements skills and lack the infrastructure necessary for effective monitoring mechanisms. Mark Yu-Ting, Lincoln J.Pan and Hai Wu wrote about theses issues in Developing China's Nonprofit Sector. (Download developing_chinas_nonprofit_sector.pdf)
Its interesting to think the Wokai's transparency could be its biggest selling point. It seems as though whether Wokai wears the microfinance hat or the China hat, in regards to the issue of transparency, neither really matters. What matters is that a donor in the States who wants to give to China can pick out the person they give to and check in over time to see the progress of that funding. Its almost as though Wokai did not need to specifically focus on microfinance, but instead could just create a non-profit allowing transparency for philanthropy in China. Interesting...
Posted at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Casey
I had an interesting revelation while I was at the beach last week...the secret sauce for creating an awesome Wokai Press Kit may lie in the pages of People Magazine & Us Weekly. Emily & Joyce, two of our summer interns from Sarah Lawrence and Wellesley, had hit a wall in their efforts to create our first ever press kit. The content was there and the writing was gramatically correct, but it didn't have that winning punch that draws the reader in and makes her need to read more.
The situation was just like the Halle Berry post-childbirth story that I had read in a June edition of People Magazine. The author told me all about her pregnancy, labor, pregnancy induced diabetes, and the whole time I was thinking "Why am I interested in this?". Useless information overload...
As opposed to the Ashlee Simpson article that I just could not get enough of. Ashlee conveniently got engaged and married to a non-descript scruffy guy after getting pregnant at 23. I ate that story up. It left me with a million questions: What did her very religious parents think about that one? How many months pregnant is she? At what point in the pregnancy did they decide on the shotgun wedding???.... I even went on to Google and spent 20 minutes of my vacation doing my due-diligence on the situation.
So, when we ran into the Halle Berry dilema of good content and facts without the hook, Emily & Joyce headed over to the pages of People & Us Weekly for inspiration on the secret behind weaving an engaging story. What's incredible is that it worked. Version 2.0 of their Press Kit has just the right combination of key information and leaving the reader wanting to know more...
Press Kits...just one of many things that you can learn from pop-cultural enrichment!
Posted at 12:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Courtney
When I recently signed onto my home page on Facebook, I noticed a new group that a Hong Kong-based friend joined called BoomtownBeijing.
BoomtownBeijing is a movie project about Beijing, its people, and their dreams before the Summer 2008 Olympics. The movie is directed by award-winning executive producer of international documentaries (and blogger), Tan Siok Siok. She made the film with the help of her students when she served as a visiting lecturer at the Beijing Film Academy. Check out their site at www.boomtownbeijing.com.
The best part of the BoomtownBeijng movie project is its dual outcome. It not only raises awarness about China and its people, but also serves as a fundraiser for the China branch of The Library Project - a non-profit that provides books and libraries to schools and orphanages around the world. In the final 100 days before the Olympics ceremony, BoomtownBeijing will show charity screenings of the documentary.
And they are not the only ones making movies to raise money.
Check out the Green Dragon Media Project.The project is dedicated to raising awareness about and funding for the environmental situation in China. In summer 2008, green building enthusiast Max Perelman with BBC film guru Caroline Harrison and local Chinese co-producer River Yun Lu traveled to China to investigate the rapid contruction going on in Beijing and beyond. Their film is an eye opening introduction to environmental probelms China faces.
By selling the movie on their site, the Green Dragon Media Project raises funds for environmental initiatives in China. Some of the initatives highlighted on their site include the Lianyungang Eco Port City Concept, the Knowledge & Innovation Community (KIC), and the Linked Hybrid - an econ chic residential community.
There is a lesson to be learned here for Wokai: Movie = Money + Movement.
The left hand of this equation is most important. What makes these movies great? How do these films tell a story? Why story are they telling? And who is tuning in to listen? Wokai needs to take each movie and better understands these questions. Once we understand, then comes the easy part: finding professional film producers to create our own China Microfinance Film Project --- pro bono. Any takers?
Posted at 05:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Courtney
According to our financial projections, Wokai is set to go broke in September.
When we first started Wokai, the idea of going broke would scare the hell out of me. But once you get used to being an entrepreneur - living life in the moment - the idea of bankrupcy three months down the line seems much less daunting.
It never ceases to amaze me how things have a tendency to work out.
Take how Wokai was first started. I had been working in the China microfinance sector for a total of about 3 years, but I was heading back to the States for a job with Morgan Stanley. I knew the sector needed help, but time was runnning out. Luckily, through a language program, I happened upon Casey, who was looking to get involved in China development world after recently graduating from Wesleyan with a degree in Economics and fluency in Chinese. Wokai was born 2 months later.
Fast forward 3 months, I started my job at Morgan Stanley as an investment banking analyst and Casey was cranking away in Beijing trying to build Wokai. Kabooom! The economy took a nose dive! And the debt markets completely collapsed. While it was bad news for many, it was good news for me. The strenuous time-constrained life of an investment banker became much less time consuming and much more flexible. This allowed me time to fly across the country on weekends, work late hours during the week, and grab calls with potential volunteers to set up our Chapter network.
Fast forward another 3 months, we missed our website launch date. The second set of developers had failed at building the website yet AGAIN. Amazingly, a few days later we found a new set of developers (Ran Xin and crew) who were recommended to us through the head of Google China. As far as we have seen thus far, these guys are top notch and really some of the best tech people in China.
And last week, Casey and I re-worked our budget and came up with the hardened reality that we were going to go broke within the next 3 months. And serendipitously, after a recent house party presentation about Wokai, a guy named Richard Palmer walked up and handed me a check for $250. No questions asked. With $250, we will be able to pay our COO for one week. And that is one more week than we could afford before.
Luck definitely plays into success. And we are greatful to have the non-profit gods on our side. But luck can only take you so far, and with a $175,000 operating budget for year one, we need a plan.
With 100 young, smart and motivated volunteers spread across 3 states and 2 continents (and without a dime in the bank to hold an event), what would you do? We, at Wokai, have come up with the idea of a Wokai Walk-a-thon. All our volunteers on the same day walking laps to raise funds for Wokai.
Will it work? Lets do the math. In a walk-a-thon, volunteers obtain pledges for miles they walk on the day of the event. So how many laps could the average volunteer walk? According to Wikipedia, it takes the average individual 20 minutes to walk a mile. Assuming walk-a-thons typically last for 45 minutes to several hours, we would hold the Wokai Walk-a-thon for 2 hours. That means that each volunteer could walk about 5 miles at the event. If each volunteer gets 25 people to pledge $5 per mile, that would allow us to aggregate $62,500. And then if we get angels, companies, and larger donors to cumulatively match that amount, we could potentionally raise over $125,000.
Now for the logisitcs. It is a big effort to plan a walk-a-thon. We will need each of our 100 volunteers to get their hands' dirty to pull off the event. We will need public relations committees, logisitcs committees, multimedia committees, sponsorship committees, etc.--- with the to-do-list in each of those committees at least a page long. And with volunteers at demanding companies like Goldman Sachs, Warburg Pincus, TPG, Morgan Stanley and more that is asking a lot! Add on the tight 4 month timeline and it becomes that much more of a challenge.
A challenge, but not impossible. Any one of us could not do it alone, but united, the impossible besomes a reality. In a previous blog entry, I wrote about how maybe the poor are not entrepreneurial by nature, but become so by nuture. Well Wokai and its volunteers are in a similar boat. We are not event planners by trade, but Darwinistic circumstances have made us so. I am excited to see if we can pull this off. It will the biggest obstacle Wokai will have ever overcome...
Posted at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Courtney
A big thank you to Minzi (Monica) Xu for the Wokai article in World Journal. It is Wokai's first Chinese-only news peice.
The interview was completely in Chinese. While Casey and I have talked about Wokai many times in China (and Casey does on a daily basis in Beijing), it was Interesting to have an interview completely in Chinese, while in the States. Casey breezed right through the interview, while I had some issues. The microfinance operations were no problem, even the online internet vocabulary were not terribly challenging, but the Chapter network was hard! Words that related to our organizational structure and chapter positions like "chapter", "finance associate" and "intern coordinator" --- were difficult. While they were not spot on, it seems as though Monica got the point.
Below is a picture of the Wokai team that was intereviewed for the article. From left to right: Wokai intern Amy Shi, Me, Wokai CEO Casey Wilson, and Wokai Advisor Tom Gold.
Article: http://worldjournal.com/wj-sf-news.php?nt_seq_id=1744536
Posted at 04:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Courtney
"Youth is easily deceived, because it is quick to hope." - Aristotle
This was the subject line from an an email I recently received from someone with whom I met to talk about Wokai. The email then continued... "You are optimistic, idealistic..."
For the record, I have never been called an optimist. In fact, quite the opposite, I have always been considered to be the realist. So why am I being called an idealist? Is it idealistic to start a non-profit?
I would argue quite the opposite: it actually quite pragmatic.
The world we live in today facilitates us making dreams into a reality. Our environment provides us with all the tools necessary to create a successful non-profit, namely funding, the internet, and a rich American culture of users and supporters. By using those tools, I think any person - idealist or not - is able to become an activist, create an organization, and attack an injustice or inequality he/she has witnessed.
Take Jon Romankiewicz - Founder of China's Green Beat.
Jon landed in China to study environmental issues thanks to a Fulbright grant. He started China's Green Beat - a collaborative blog about environmental issues in China - to put his visions on the web. And thanks to a receptive American culture (and Chinese one for that matter) viewers inside and outside of China are watching.
Take Annie Hazlehurst - Founder of Knowledge Beat
Annie is over in Zambia establishing her non-profit Knowledge Beat - dedicated to education in Zambia. Before heading out to Africa, Annie popped up a website (thanks to the help of friends) and fundraised like crazy amongst friends, family, and previous employers to scrap together enough cash to get the organization. When she returns, Annie will be helped by a team of volunteers in the States to keep the Knowledge Beat bumpin.
Take Tomo Hamakawa - Founder of Rabsal
Tomo found Rabsal - a non-profit dedicated to a sustainable Tibet - after spending two years working at the Bridge Fund monitoring and capacity building with projects in Tibet. With funding from friends and family as well as the continued determination of its founders, Rabsal was created. For their inaugeral project this summer, Rabsal is teaching Tibetan high school students how to film and edit documentaries about their livelihood. And thanks to the internet these videos will be shared throughout the world for users everywhere to view.
Take Matt Flannery - Founder of Kiva
Matt took Kiva from a donut shop to the world thanks to funding provided by family, friends, and angels as well as motivation & support given by Kiva friends. It was users like you and me that then grew Kiva to what it has become today.
Take Casey Wilson and Courtney McColgan - Founders of Wokai
Wokai has been created through funding from friends, family and angels; through the support of our Chapter Representatives; and through the knowledge shared by Kiva, CICETE, CASS, Microvest, Dignity Fund, Planet Finance, Citigroup, and Grameen. Without this environment of support, there is no doubt in my mind that Wokai would not have come into existence.
Posted at 05:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Courtney
A friend recently sent me interesting article by Jeffrey Tucker: Will Microcredit Save the World posted on the The Free Market. The article basically says that microcredit won't work and that the Grameen Bank is doomed to fail.
Why is Grameen and the rest of the microcredit industry doomed to fail? in Tucker's article, Vijay Mahajan -head of an India-based microfinance institution BASIX - highlights five fatal assumptions of the Grameen Bank:
With a 6,000+ credit card bill vested in a microfinance start-up, Tucker's article definitely threw me for a loop. The poor not entrepreneurial? Credit only for the rich? Is he serious? Or is he right?
Some thoughts:
Posted at 07:26 AM in Microfinance | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
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