China is an interesting market; it has such an incredible government capable of bringing the country to incredible heights. Sometimes I wish I was in China instead- it would have been such an experience to have lived through the most explosive growth land of the 21st century, rather than have a front seat in witnessing the stumbles of a waning giant (i.e. the USA).

Am now sitting in Stanford’s Venture Weekend, helping out. Its pretty amazing hearing 20 people in the room do a startup- from brainstorming the idea (what they are doing now) to actually creating the product. Its also very interesting to see how the dynamics of the group work: the emergence of the leaders, the vocal ones, the clever ones, the ones who are obviously “tuning out”. It will be interesting to see how this all turns out at the end of the weekend.

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!)