Hongqing Chen
Hongqing gave this speech at the Wokai Launch Celebration in Seattle (to a standing ovation!)
My mother was a microlender to fellow villagers during the Cultural Revolution. For about three years, my family lived in one of the poorest villages in Jiangxi Province. In the commune system, villagers were required to give one pig per family per year to the commune in addition to working the field. They were not paid for their work. Instead, they got working credits. At the end of the harvest, each family was allocated grains pro rated by its members’ combined working credits, from the leftover after the county government received its quota. They were paid at minimum price for the pig quota. After paying for daily needs of anything that they could not produce, such as kerosene, salt, soy sauce, needles, threads, fabric, etc., there was little left. Since my parents retained their little salaries even after they were laid off from their working units and sent to countryside, villagers borrowed cash from my mother for emergency or purchasing piglets. They paid her back with goods or cash raised by selling eggs or vegetables, or after selling extra pigs. She did not charge interest and always got her money back except for one borrower, the head of the village.
Now for myself. My career of over nine years at Washington Mutual as a risk and portfolio manager has ended. I need to find employment. As I reassessed my career path, I have realized that I also need to increase the portion of my life toward the improvement of my fellow men on this planet. Microfinance seems to be a good fit for me, as it combines my education, experience and personal goal. Through the search for microfinance organizations, I found Washington CASH and signed up as a volunteer there. I also found Wokai and jumped on the offer to blog on its website. At Wokai, being a Chinese is a plus. I admire Wokai staff’s passion and dedication to elevate China’s poor. How could I stand on the sideline, as an ethnic Chinese, when so many people unrelated to China care so much about my kinsmen?
During a conversation, Casey relayed an argument from a Seattleite that struck me. This gentleman asked: “Why should we help China? Why not let the Chinese government solve its own problem?” To respond, I’d like to borrow a statement from Dr. Martin Luther King, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” and modify it to “Poverty anywhere is a threat to prosperity everywhere.” Poor people sometimes are driven to do radical or criminal things to support their families. There are plenty examples.
Charity is one way to solve the problem of poverty. Microfinance goes one step further. We all know the saying: “Give a man a fish and it feeds him once. Give him a fishing pole and he can feed himself everyday.” Many friends, colleagues and I donate funds and volunteer time to worthy causes every year.
I believe that micro lending is a great way to give because FIRST, it is so effective. MFIs everywhere report low loss rates, contradicting common rating agency rule that low credit scores means higher loan losses. Consequently, your micro loan money lent to someone can be used again and again. SECOND, in the case of Wokai, because Wokai passes 100% of loan amount to micro loan borrowers in China, your contribution is not diluted by administration fees or other incidental charges. THIRD, and probably most importantly, this form of donation gives people the dignity of working to take care of themselves when normally financial services are denied to them.
Jim Thomas, CEO of Community Capital Development told me that it takes about $35,000 to create a job (that takes people off welfare) here. Percy Barnevik, CEO of Hand in Hand International estimated that it takes about $200 to create a job in developing world. Imagine how many jobs will be created with your micro lending contributions! I invite you to join me and realize the difference we can make together!
* Without Margie Hussey, a published writer and a great friend and neighbor, this speech would have been dull and boring. I also want to thank my colleagues and friends Bob Shaw, Ketty Loeb, Megan Davidson, Seva Kumar, Andy Subkoviak, and John Shepherd for their suggestions, editing, and proofreading.
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