Tech for Change

Google.org would better be named philanthropy@google.com, and google donates 1% of equity, 1% of profit, and 1% of employee time. Given google’s sheer scale, this is still a huge amount. They use the sheer power of technology and money to do good- they fund so many amazing things. They have interests in clean energy, global health, and information services; you can see the list of projects here. Some of the projects they do are simply amazing, such as the tool which predicts flu trends 2 weeks before it strikes. It also funds Dr. Nathan Wolfe of TED fame, whose work you can read about here.

Virgance, Activism 2.0

Virgance is “Activism 2.0″, and uses web technologies and the silicon valley energy to empower activism. It has pretty amazing projects, like the 1BOG (One block of the Grid) which uses a combination of collective bargaining and solar power to take “one block off the energy grid”, promoting solar power. They shared many new ideas with us; though I had some reservations about the effectiveness of some ideas it was refreshing to see someone bring such a breath of fresh air into an otherwise stale industry devoid of innovation.

I was particularly interested in what Virgance’s founder Steve Newcomb had to say about his company. He had been in 5 startups, and just sold Powerset to Microsoft. He talked about his HR strategy: to get hired at Virgance, you had to have all the current staff there unanimously decide that you should be hired, after a 1 month trial “interview”. The idea was that he only wanted “A team” people, and that a strong, united team would move faster than a disunited, bulky one.

He also had a “handshake agreement”: he believed that all the people he hired were so good, that he knew he would lose them eventually. Thus employment was more of a 1 year contract, for his employees to give him their very best, and then leave. In turn he would train and mentor them from his experiences in startups for that 1 year. Virgance was also a “teaching company”, where everybody taught the others what they knew, so everybody would be well rounded. They had common lunch discussions, open workspaces, dorm-room like offices. Interesting culture of an interesting organization.

826 Valencia was started in 2002, and is essentially a nonprofit tuition centre cum playground, even though its stated mission is to “support students ages 6 to 18 with their writing skills, and to helping teachers get their students excited about the writing”. Its design is amazing: on the outside, it is a pirate shop- but once you go in, it is a classroom. The founder told us it was because the building was supposed to used for retail; thus they had to have a shop in there in order to get it. The proceeds from the shop go to fund the tuition center inside.

The center is essentially run by a few staff, and many, many volunteers. Parents can bring their children in any time for tutoring in math, science and/or (most importantly) writing; it all happens on a free-rolling basis (not set classes). Volunteers drop in whenever they like to tutor the kids, and they ranged from recent college graduates to retirees, and a kindly old man who said he knew Ho Kwon Ping from his Stanford days.

They also had a cool ‘world table’ that displayed google maps on the face of a table. You rolled the table clockwise to zoom in (and vice versa), and moved left and right by tilting the table from side to side. I shot a video of it here:

Upwardly Global on the other hand seeked to train “highly skilled immigrants” and equip them with job skills, and cultural skills to be able to get a job and keep it here. I talked to some of the people there- met people with PhDs who were unable to get a job beyond being cashiers because they spoke English with an accent; also met several Iraqis who were refugees in the USA. One man ran a huge business in his native Peru, and knew more about environmental engineering that the Stanford students; he was only able to get a job at Wal-Mart because of his thick accent.

I couldn’t help but feel that perhaps there should be a similar program for international students like myself. Getting used to the American culture is sometimes a shock; perhaps having a course to equip ourselves with “cultural skills” would be a great help in our integration into America, however short a period that we may be here.

Wokai.org, a Kiva for China

Wokai.org is essentially a Kiva for China, which exists due to China’s strict regulations and laws which prevent Kiva from operating. However there is one difference- in Kiva, you get your money back; in Wokai, your money is essentially a donation which you cannot get back.

Spoke to the founder, Casey, and she outlined her goal to make “Wokai” a giving site to all of China; on not just microfinance but also moving on to other areas such as education, training etc. She shared frankly on her difficulties starting Wokai.org; I really admired her ability to manage her strong pool of volunteers and supporters (she got help from web developers in China, businessmen in America, etc).

(Post edited at the request of Casey, Wokai’s founder)

It troubled me greatly that Wokai.org did not have a chinese version of the web site; the language of the very people they were helping. Perhaps it would do well for someone to develop a Joomla code to aid the translation from Chinese to English to Chinese seamlessly.

I fear that wokai.org is perhaps a lot of hype attracting many volunteers: the last I checked, Wokai.org had almost 200 people involved in Wokai.org chapters in the USA, but only 9 people needing loans on the site, and 0 chapters in China. This is not necessarily bad- they just started out, and this could all be capacity building before moving into China. But it does seem a bit economically unsound that China, with the world’s largest savings pool (i.e. cheap credit) needs money from the credit-strapped West to do its work, something the founders of Wokai seem to realise.

I’m going to try to schedule a meeting between the founders, and the chinese community in Stanford. Wokai is such a great organization with great potential, but may go down the wrong path out of the hubris of hype, and “neo-imperialism” if it does not include the domestic population to help themselves.

Qifang.cn, a Chinese P2P student loan site

Back later, I googled Chinese microfinance and found Qifang, a chinese loans site which does p2p loans to students in China. The founder, Calvin, added me on Twitter (wow!) and I am looking forward to talking to him more. From Techcrunch’s report it seems like a very good model- very, very good. Can it be brought to Southeast Asia?

Many of the organizations here are innovative and really awaken you to the number of causes out there one can support. Over the past few days I have met people from Google.org, Upwardly Global, Wokai, Interplast, the Ella Baker Center, Delancey Street, 826 Valencia, and the Draper Richards Foundation.

Visiting them and being able to ask questions about what they do and all has enabled me to see many good ideas about these startups; at the same time I have also been able to see their flaws and their struggles. There are so many ideas here that I can adapt and take back to Southeast Asia, and I will write about this and other realisations at another time (when there is a better internet connection!)