Wokai Adventures

Concluding Remarks from Wokai SF's Inaugural Drinks for a Better World Event

Christina Zhao

Christina is the Events Associate for Wokai's San Francisco - Bay Area Chapter.

Having always wanted to turn every little activity amongst friends into an “event”, I realized that my true calling in life is event planning. With a background in finance and finance only, Wokai offered me the amazing opportunity to be in charge of chapter events and to learn as I do.

 

The Bay Area Wokai family celebrating a successful launch of our Drinks for a Better World campaign with, you guessed it, WOKA-KAZE shots!

As the newly minted Events Associate for Wokai, I am ecstatic to be sharing the wonderful news of our first fundraising event of 2009. Last Thursday (March 26, 2009), over 200 individuals gathered at San Francisco’s premier happy hour spot, Taverna Aventine, to celebrate Wokai’s inaugural Drinks for a Better World (DFBW) event. This event was a tremendous success and with everyone’s hard work and contributions, we managed to raise over $2,500 in suggested donations! To put things into better perspective, US$2,500 in China is enough to cover the cost of 40 roundtrip overnight train tickets from Wokai's Beijing Headquarters to our field partner in Inner Mongolia in addition to one full year of housing accommodations for a Wokai Fellow on location. Talk about having a long lasting impact!

The Bay Area Chapter’s DFBW campaign follows in the footsteps of our Beijing counterpart and has a vision of providing an easily accessible and social environment where young professionals with a similar desire for social change and philanthropy can come together to meet one another and to exchange valuable new ideas.

 

Thursday’s event would not have been possible without the generous support of the owners of Aventine as well as one of the most wonderful and down to earth girls I know, Summer Huff, Peroni and Pilsner account representative. With their help, Wokai was able to take over the bar from 6 to 9 pm and offer attendees drink specials such as $3 Peronis and $4 Woka-kaze shots (our take on the traditional kamikaze, another success!). Even though the event was scheduled to conclude at 9 pm, seeing so many of our guests having such a great time mingling, I did not have the heart to break up the party and the event went on until well past 10:30pm.

One of the main objectives for putting together this event was to raise awareness for microfinance in China and to spread the word about the impactful difference a simple $25 contribution can make in someone else’s life. My fellow Wokai volunteers acted as “information spreaders” that evening to ensure that every person in attendance understood our mission and all the different venues through which they can help. We were extremely successful in garnering interest and even received numerous requests from individuals who wanted to become volunteers.

This whole experience, from the planning stages, to securing a venue, to heavily publicizing to friends and colleagues, and finally to the post-event group dinner where volunteers and Wokai friends celebrated the success together, was an extremely heartwarming one. I have learned that when you are truly passionate about something, that type of enthusiasm and excitement becomes contagious to others around you and those people want nothing more than to see you succeed. And for that, I am forever grateful!

To all those who attended this event, I sincerely appreciate your support and hope that you had as much fun as I did. Please stay tuned because the next Wokai Drinks for a Better World will be even better.

In the meantime, please save the date for Wokai’s launch event “Dollars Without Borders: Growing Microfinance in China.” It will take place inside the Ferry Building on Sunday, June 28th, 2009 and will include guest speakers such as Premal Shah, President of Kiva, and Maya Chorengel, Managing Director of UNITUS Equity Fund; the premier of a short-film How the Rural Half Lives; a silent auction; as well as breathtaking views of the San Francisco waterfront. Feel free to reach out to me if you want any more details and I look forward to seeing you soon at the next Wokai event! 干杯 (Cheers)!

Wokai China Microfinance Series: The Idea of Microfinance

Geri Mason

The Idea of Microfinance

Microfinance: (n) small finance; various financial services and transactions carried out on a micro, small, tiny scale; financial services, loans, savings, deposit collections, in small denominations. Non-traditional relationships between a financial institution and a customer, based on human interaction rather than on collateral, profit volume, and legal recourse.

Microfinance is more than just small finance. It’s more than a $25 loan or a $5 profit. It’s a door to walk through. Another option in a place where there aren’t many. It’s a network of relationships, built of time and trust. People are what makes microfinance work. Lenders, borrowers, donors, entrepreneurs, families, communities.

Microfinance has a significant impact on the levels of production and consumption in the local economy, increasing both. Wenzhou is considered the most entrepreneurial city in China, with over 300,000 small businesses. The roots of this wealth of production are modest and familiar: microfinance. Microfinace, in the form of informal extended-family credit, fueled Wenzhou's manufacturing boom in the late 20th Century.

As small businesses start and grow, so do incomes. Opportunities increase in the community, and so does income and consumption. This provides the chance for advancement and growth to related businesses as well, who then repeat the cycle, spreading the benefits further. It is the same principle that drives the fiscal policies of the governments in developed countries: the Multiplier Effect. It is what drove the economic development of the isolated city of Wenzhou, China, to the flourishing manufacturing center it has become. It becomes an avalanche of growth.

A Financial Times article in December 2008 featured the story of Li Anlian, a Wenzhou entrepreneur, who owns a shoe factory started with a micro loan. She now employs 3800 people in her factory and produces 10 million shoes annually. Many factories in Wenzhou boast a similar tale. In fact, according to the Financial Times article, for anyone who uses a cigarette lighter, there is a 70 per cent chance it was made in Wenzhou.

 

Wenzhou is not thriving today as it has for the last three decades. With the current financial crisis spreading as far as the manufacturing industry in China, foreign demand is hurting an industry that depends heavily on exports. Microfinance is becoming a crucial source of credit for threatened entrepreneurs facing lower export demand from their best customers, including the United States. Many factories are facing closure, no longer able to find markets for their products overseas or access the credit they need to keep them operating in this period of reduced revenue.

“China’s financial system has not opened up enough,” says Yao Xianguo, dean of the College of Public Administration at Zhejiang University. “Big private companies increasingly rely on the government while smaller firms suffer from their inability to get loans from state-owned banks.”

Microfinance has an important role to play in China. It is more than one small loan for one poor person, although that is where it starts. The idea of microfinance is the idea of life: we are all interconnected. Change one person’s life and it will affect others’. No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible. (Voltaire) Whose life will you change?

Visit www.wokai.org and click on the contribute tab. Want to start an avalanche?