I am here today to give you a few examples of thriving Chinese social Enterprises. I believe they are inspiring both for people who know about China or the people who don’t.
What is the situation in China right now?
I will share with yo u f our innovative models how Chinese social enterpreneurs use social media tools and technology to establish network and become scalable.
Xindanwei. literally means “New Work Unit,” Xindanwei is a community and social network service to promote and facilitate creativity, sharing, and the great scale of collaboration among social entrepreneurs and people who want to make changes.
Xindanwei model is a merge of online s ocial network and physical workplaces. While Xindanwei.com uses cloud computing technology to provide Real-time online communication i ncluding file sharing a nd wikis to increase collaboration efficiency for its members, Xindanwei workspaces offers member full faciilties to work and to meet people, to host u ser- g enerated offline events and public activities, and catalyse innovative projects.
It is free to become a Xindanwei online member and costs 1 pound/person/hour to rent an office or conference room. Above all, a Xindanwei membership is evaluated and adjusted based on the value of each member’s contributions and interactions in the community , the returns are a digital currency called “ share”, and it can be cashable and traded inside and outside Xindanwei community.
Yeeyan, an organization who discovers, translate and read the best of the Web from English to Chinese to ensure people who can’t speak English could have access to some useful and crucial knowledge available on the web. It is an online Community of translators connected through Web 2.0 tools : It uses Wiki platform to allow co-translation and allow others to co-editing - Interest/topic Group to segment the translators - Right now, yeeyan is crowdsourced by local publisher and foreign content owners (like the Guardian and Telegraph) Translators get rewarded from the book sales and advertising sales Impact: 150000 users, 15000 translators, 500 projects going on simutanously, and working with more than 20 publishers.
Qifang is a web service for students and schools to find funding and recipients for micro loans and scholarships, manage relationships and data, and share in a community of borrowers, lenders and donors. Impact: 3000 loans, over $1.2M USD, 96% repayment rate. Qifang is working on b2b deals with banks and credit companie, the value of qifang is in the customers, credit data, and they discuss deals for cooperation and partnership.
It is An Open Sourcing tourism charity organization . Its aim is Building and optimizing online community of young travelers to rural area, encourage young backpackers to carry one kg more books and toys to the rural area to give to the children over there. It has an Online Wiki database for community to share rural school information and trip experiences and co-design solution and services
What are the difficulties?
Despite of all the difficulties, we are still taking actions: Social Innovation China is an event for and by social entrepreneurs,it is a platform to network, exchange ideas, explore collaboration and Get Things Done.
And we are working together to start Entrepreneur Commons Chapter in China, dedicated to helping Chinese social enterpreneurs through peer-support groups. This chapter meet once a month, and entrepreneurs share ideas, knowledge and contacts in a closed trusted environment. The chapter is also a pipeline from which entrepreneurs collaborate to select mature projects that will become eligible for funding.
We believe only if we could connect our network with one another and share our knowledge with our peers within the country and on a global level, it is possible for us to win the trust and build consensus with the government, influence the policy and funding infrastructure, therefore, make China a more civilized society and bring change to the world.