In today's MSNBC article Beijing starts locking poor villages at night, it is being reported that Beijing's migrant communities will effectively be locked down in an effort to prevent crime. According to the article, residents entering and exiting areas will be asked to show their documents (assumed to be Hukou and/or temporary residence permits) at night in the 16 villages. Experts in the article are quoted as saying that this is a move that not only looks bad, but also will only serve to more deeply ingrain existing discrimination. Discrimination that is part of the core problem of migrant crime.

It is an action that is surely being taken with short term security goals in mind, but as the quoted experts suggest, the long term implication of the "Sealed Management" policy are likely to only exacerbate the underlying issues that exist. Which will likely do little to relieve the pressures of future instability and security within the population as the feelings of isolation and discrimination are only reinforced by policies that single them out as "the problem".

Long term the problems are more complex.

Issues of economic and physical security at the forefront of crime, long term the policies will need to be focused on offering migrants an opportunity to reap the rewards for their work to build and support cities, but also ensure that their investments be protected.

To learn more about my thoughts on creating stable communities and cities, please refer to my recent pitch from the BMW Young Leaders Forum

This is an old post that I originally had at another site, but while catching up on some reading, I was reminded by the power of the interviews we did last summer, the stories we began to tell, and the sense of respect I have for China's migrant workers

Earlier in the year while a few of my interns were inbetween assignments, I tasked them to get out of the office and do some street interviews. Now, executing street interviews was nothing new for them, but instead of taking out a video camera and asking questions to our typical targets, I wanted to push them outside their boundaries and speak to people whom they were more likely to walk right past on their way to work.

Migrants. Cooks. Sidewalk Seamstresses. DVD vendors. Pot Sticker vendors. Fruit vendors. Crane Operators. Bus Drivers.

It was a project I named Shanghai's 100 hardest jobs, which was (for the sake of full disclosure) inspired by the Discovery Channel program Dirty Jobs.

Initially, my interns were a bit skeptical, and were giving me the face of "he has gone crazy... again", but over the course of the next few weeks the first team completed about 30 interviews (2 more teams have since completed nearly 100 interviews), and were looking for more. In short, they were not only hooked, they were seeing a side of Shanghai that they never new existed.

... and they were Shanghaiese.

Reading through the interviews (we use the same questions for each), one is given a really humbling glimpse into the lives of these people and how hard they have it. People who are busting their humps day in and day out, and eating bitterness, for a common cause.

Hope and opportunity.

Cigarette Vendor - female from Henan

Q: Would you want your children to have this job?

A; No. My husband and I have this job/career because we lack of qualified education background. Letting them step on our old roads is the last thing I want to do. To my 14-year-old girl, I don’t have so many strings attached and just want her to live a happy life; as to my boy, I hope he can be a government official someday, a big name who has power (laugh).

Watermelon Vendor

Q: What do you want most right now?

A: We hope our boys can go to school in Shanghai. The education conditions are much better than we have in Linyi and we can take care of them while making a living here.

Hat Vendor

Q: If there was one thing you could change about your job, what would it be?

A: Change? It is such a luxury to me. How can I dream about changing my current status? I want to do my own business, like opening my own restaurant, but who will give me the money? I want to recruit and train my employees, but who will teach me how to manage or run my place? I dare not think of change. I guess my only hope is my son. He is the one can bring real changes.

Everything comes down to hope and opportunity

For the next generation.

With the last 2.5 years being the most active time in China's recent history of citizen based philanthropy, it has become clear that the level of opaqueness in the system has become a real issue for some.  That while the historical system of donations, largely fuelled by corporations looking to leverage their donations into something else, benefited from a level of opaqueness.  the current system that is meant to encourage public engagement does not.

This was perhaps highlighted best during the 5.12 Earthquake when firms, and celebrities, were thrown into a media cycle that no one had expected.  That, unlike before, people were paying attention to how much was donated, by whom, and for what cause, and additionally, it was also clear that, unlike before, the organizations on the receiving end of the donations were going to be expected to show a far higher degree of transparency than they were used to.

It is an issue that has come up recently on a number of occasions when speaking to students, corporations, and ordinary people, and it is an issue that has recently been highlighted in a Global Times piece Skeptical Chinese donors need concrete results where Wang Zhenyao discussed the difficulties of fundraising, reporting, and managing expectations:

To persuade people to support you, you need to have a strong reason for them to do so. Good causes and good proposals speak for themselves. Take the project on autistic children in Shenzhen for example. The Shenzhen Autism Society (SAS) gathered hundreds mothers with autistic kids and wrote to the central government. The top leaders learned about the project and sent inspectors there to learn how SAS helps the young patients. Now SAS receives millions of yuan from the local bureau every year.

In addition to that, you also need to show people what you have done with the money received. The lack of transparency creates misunderstanding. There is a common speculation that the money has gone to the pockets of corrupt officials. What I did back in the Ministry of Civil Affairs to combat such misunderstanding was to have flyers and pamphlets printed out and sent to all sponsors and related departments.

After seeing the smiling faces and reading the reports about the people and projects that received donations, the donors and public had a much better idea of what the charity had done. Some charity organizations posted their statistics online but received unsatisfactory results.

It is a situation that I feel at times is grounded more in ignorance than curiosity as average citizens are looking to understand the "impact" their money is having, and it is a condition that I feel will require NGOs, GOvernment Agencies, and 3rd parties to begin working together in an effort to educate the public, manage expectations, and provide a clearer picture of where NGOs are spending the money.

Why is doing this so important?

Simple. On a fairly regular basis, I find myself fielding questions about the impact of donations, the amount of money that an NGO spends on overhead, and whether or not NGOs are simply wolves in disguise, it is clear that regardless of where the education gap lies, it is NGOs who will be forced to pay the price in the long term. that, without addressing the transparency concerns of donors and opening themselves up to 3rd parties, they will eventually risk their brand, funding streams, and eventually programs.

Working to develop platforms with students as the base is perhaps one of the most important, and difficult, things to fully accomplish.

It is a group that we have been engaging with on a number of levels, and through our experiences we have come to understand requires a completely different approach and motivated by very different things, but that if you can effectively develop a program that engages students you can build a strong base of support that becomes a source of scale for impact and programs.

As part of our work to define and support the efforts of China’s social entrepreneurs, the Collective Responsibility Social Entrepreneur have been working on a series of exercises. Exercises that are mean to begin developing a framework that defines what is a social enterprise (non and for profit) is in China, as well as to develop a stronger understanding of the constraints that these entrepreneurs and organizations operate in, the challenges they face, the potential scale of their ideas, and areas where they can be supported in their endeavors.

The first exercise was a simple one.

Take 25 of China’s most well known social enterprises and place them on a chart to measure their potential scale (size of bubble), their primary mission (X Axis), and their financial model (Y Axis).

And as you can see in the chart above, there is a wide spectrum of organizational structures, financial models, and scale in China’s social entrepreneurs. With the more nonprofit group found in the lower right quadrant (Hands On Shanghai, 1KG, Huadan, Golden Bridges, and others), it was clear that the perception was that the more socially focused one’s organization was, the more reliant on fundraising and event based revenues it was. While, on the other side of the spectrum, groups like Shanghai Organics, Naked Retreat, and Bambu Home have developed (in the eyes of participants) a financial model that is focused more on profit, and has a stronger product or service model to support operations.

More interesting though was that when we plotted the perceptions of participants against those of the founders, what we found was that there were a number of groups who had clearly done a good job of communicating their mission and message externally, and others who had not.

That, and I will use my own first social venture HandsOn Shanghai, as the example, there were a range of opinions about the potential scale of HandsOn Shanghai. For some, a volunteer platform was something that offered limited scale, while for others, they took the view that volunteerism in China held large potential. Mission wise and economic model wise, we were nearly in line (at least everything was within the same quadrant).

However another group, who I will keep nameless, had a very different set of perceptions. That, even though they are one of the more well known social ventures in China, they have largely created a name for themselves without creating a name that had a managed focus in the minds of participants. That, even though they are perhaps one of the more well known brands, there is wide range of perceptions about their core mission, their economic model, and their scale. And that confusion was even shared by the cofounders (red dots).

In the end, and the above charts are only a fraction of the existing body of work, the trends we are beginning to see are quite interesting. That in general, the more profit driven the group, the increased perception of scale and economic sustainability exists, while those on the NGO side (lower right) are seen to have a smaller potential scale. And that while there are clear cluster patterns emerging, there are still a number of hybrid organizations that exist and are creating a bit of gray space between the black and while.

If you would like to participate in the first exercise, feel free to send an email to SE (at) collectiveresponsibility.org and we will send you the file to be completed.

As part of the 8th Europe Asia Young Leaders Forum, I was asked to present my thoughts on two questions:

• How do cities organize communal life and maintain social harmony?
• What can business contribute to these processes?

.. and I was given 15 minutes to do so.

The questions for me were ones that I regularly think about (particularly the first) as I walk through cities that I live in and travel through, but it was the first time that I had been challenged to put my thoughts into a single package.

At the heart of it, there are 5 major things that I thought cities needed to do well before they would find a "harmonious balance":

1. Good urban Planning
2. Provide Economic opportunities
3. Offer a suitable quality of life
4. Safety and Security
5. Environmental stability

How business fit into this wider picture is, and was, a bit more intangible to the presentation as I focused a lot on the role of the city, but in short, it is my belief that companies are being asked to play a stronger role in the development of community.  That, beyond providing jobs and paying taxes, it is the firms who work hard to develop internal and external communities are far more likely to find themselve in balance as well.

Recently, while reading Philanthro-capitalism, the author made brief mention of the fact that successful business people who took the time while traveling to get out of their hotels and have real experiences tended to give more thought to the role in their own communities.

It was a point that, like Marketing 101 terminology, I already knew, but the way the author threaded the two issues, the more I realized how my own travels (and general interests in the human condition) have fueled my own work in many ways.

That, while I was myself blinded by the shiny glass buildings on Shanghai's Nanjing West Road, my extensive travel in Asia told me that beyond the glass facades existed another world. A world that I not simply needed to venture through as a tourist, but that I needed to study and work with.

A process that initially lead me to sign up for my first event with Hands On San Francisco in the late 90's, would lead me to see that conditions were ripe to form Hands On Shanghai in late 2003/ early 2004, catalyzed my research into the problems China faces with creating a sustainable balance, and drives me to seek out people and organizations that can be solution providers.

Many of whom are themselves well traveled, and are very likely to step out of their comfort zones as well.

One of the issues that brands entering China are coming to more fully apprecaite is the fact that as they transition from a export led model to one meant to capture the local Chinese market, the costs and risks of their supply chain are going to increase.  That unlike before, where a firm could compartmentalize and seperate the secrets of their supply chain, skeletons are being exposed at a far higher rate, and the costs of exposure are far higher.

It is the core message of my recent article for Supply Chain Asia, and I encourage you to download the full 5 page article when you have the time.

As news of the Yushu earthquake disappears from the world's front pages, survivors' needs increase. Those in Yushu still lack blankets and tents. Temperatures are dropping and there is insufficient fuel for cooking and heating. Yushu has no electricity and is still in darkness. People have only meager food supplies and are drinking water from unsafe sources.

    * A jacket costs 2 USD.
    * A blanket costs 2.40 USD.
    * A toothbrush costs 0.15 USD.
    * One ton of coal costs 51 USD.
    * 20 * 500ml bottled water 2.20 USD.
    * Flashlight: 2.90 USD.

If you can make even a small donation, please visit: www.yushuearthquakeresponse.org

Apart from the needs of those in Yushu, patients and their families in Xining are also suffering.

Below are the number of patients in Qinghai hospitals:

    * Qinghai Province People's Hospital: 186 patients
    * Armed Police Number Four Hospital: 83 patients
    * Qinghai Province Red Cross Hospital: 69 patients
    * Qinghai University Hospital: 172 patients
    * Qinghai Province People's Second Hospital: 127 patients
    * Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture Hospital: 18 patients

This total of 655 people does not include accompanying family members.

Below are accounts written by Xining students describing the situation here and in Yushu.
 

Tashi:
I received information about the earthquake from my brother who is a teacher in Yushu. At about 5:00 a.m on the fourteenth of April a low magnitude quake woke people up, but many people then went back to sleep. Later that morning the big earthquake came. At that time many students were reciting lessons outside, by the walls of the school buildings. They were crushed when the walls fell on them. Some female students were going to the cafeteria to collect boiling water to make instant noodles, and the cafeteria collapsed and killed them. Despite all these terrible things, many people survived. They did not have any food for three days. After three days, instant noodles arrived and the people, almost starving, happily ate them. Now people are cold; they don't have enough clothes, or blankets, or anywhere to stay.

Rinchen
I went to the hospital to help earthquake victims. Although I am Tibetan I couldn't communicate very well with the patients because we speak different dialects. Nonetheless we could understand each other. People are just bringing them bread to eat and water to drink. They need some good food. The clerks at the hospital told me that many people are volunteering, but they still need qualified, professional, helpers.

Drolma
I went to the hospital to volunteer with my classmates – we spent one night there. There were many patients in the hospital. Some of the patients could not move, eat, drink, or go to the toilet by themselves. When people were awake they were nervous and when they were asleep they had nightmares. One man I helped had bruises all over his face and he couldn't move his legs. The patients in the hospital still don't have any clean clothes and what they are wearing has already become dirty and caked with blood.

Tsomo
Three of my female classmates are from Yushu. After the terrible earthquake they lost many relatives and friends, not to mention property. Luckily their parents are still alive. Now those three women are working busily in the hospital, day and night. They have been staying up all night to help the patients from their hometown and cannot attend classes as usual. When they come back to school from the hospital they just fall on the bed and sleep. Patients in the hospital have nothing now. I hope many warm-hearted people will stretch out their hands to help them.

Lumo
There is a girl from Yushu in the dorm room next to mine. She lost her mother in the earthquake. Since then she often calls out her mother's name and cries. Sometimes she stays silent for a long time. We don't know how to comfort her. Sometimes we want to talk about it with her, but maybe that will only make it worse. That girl is still going to classes, but she just sits there and we don't know if she really knows what is going on her around her.

Tsering and Tsemdo
We talked to one earthquake survivor who helped us to distribute supplies we took to Yushu from Xining. He told us, "I woke up when the earthquake occurred at around 5 a.m. I knew that an earthquake was occurring and wanted to get up but I felt very sleepy and stayed in bed. My wife also felt very sleepy and stayed in bed. We were never so sleepy in our whole life – it was very strange. When an earthquake occurred again at 7:49 a.m., our house shook and I woke up. The house continued to shake and I grabbed hold of my grandson and wife, jumped up from bed, and ran outside. Our house collapsed just as I stepped out of the door. Something heavy hit my head and I passed out. When I woke up I could barely see because my vision was blurry. As my sight came back I could only see dust. I heard the sound of houses collapsing. After the earthquake, my daughter and son-in-law were trapped in the rubble and died but the rest of the family was OK. Many other people have died.”  

Below are some photographs that local photographer Tsemdo made on April 17th, 2010, who traveled to Yushu to deliver aid supplies with local NGO Friendship Charity Association.

We have just received this report from friends at the Friendship Charity Association (Qinghai based).  In it are pictures from their first truckloads, as well as information on how to donate to further efforts.

On April 14th 2010 an earthquake measuring between 6.9 and 7.1 on the Richter scale struck thirty kilometers from Jyekundo, the capital of Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (Qinghai Province, China) causing widespread destruction. State media reports suggest that approximately 85% of all buildings in the city of ~100,000 people were destroyed. 1,706 people have been reported dead, 256 are missing, and thousands are injured.

Friendship Charity Association (FCA) first contacted its long-term partner organization the Huaqiao Foundation (http://www.huaqiaofoundation.org/) at 2 p.m. on April 14 2010 in order to organize the delivery of aid to the Yushu earthquake. FCA is based in Xining, about 800km from the earthquake epicenter. Shortly after contacting Huaqiao, we also contacted several other donors and friends and were thus able to collect 30,055 RMB.

Early on the morning of April 15, FCA requested its staff members and volunteers to go to local stores to purchase food, water, clothes, tents, bedding, and medical supplies. Everything was prepared by 7 p.m.

With five people guiding two trucks, the team arrived in Yushu at 6:24 p.m. on April 16.

Coordinating with local friends and NGOs in Yushu, the FCA team members distributed the supplies. The evening we arrived and complied lists of needy individuals and families. First thing next morning we distributed supplies.

FCA is now seeking further funding for disaster relief and is continuing to coordinate with our local partners in Yushu to determine their needs.

To donate, please click here http://www.friendshipcharity.org/donate/.

To see our account info and for other donation alternatives, please contact us at: nangchukja@friendshipcharity.org