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Co-Founder and CEO Casey Wilson Interviewed by Project Pengyou

linnea.damer@wokai.org (Linnea Damer) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:51:18 CST

Casey Wilson, Co-founder and CEO of Wokai, answered Project Pengyou writer George Ding's questions about Wokai's origins, growth and future. Check out the interview here.

[Photo courtesy of Agenda Magazine]

CCTV Airs Wokai Special

linnea.damer@wokai.org (Linnea Damer) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 10:36:36 CST

Click over to this CCTV special about Wokai for interviews with Co-founder and CEO Casey Wilson, the staff at HQ, and other members of the Wokai community! (Mandarin and English audio and subtitles.)

Wokai's HQ team in Beijing.

Wokai Featured in the Taipei Times

linnea.damer@wokai.org (Linnea Damer) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 17:05:24 CST

Wokai Co-founder and CEO Casey Wilson and Chief of Staff Emily Davis were both interviewed by Allison Jackson of the Associated French Press for this article explaining Wokai's mission and the special role it plays in the broader context of China's economic development.

Wokai Profiled in AmCham's Insight Magazine

linnea.damer@wokai.org (Linnea Damer) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:40:39 CST

Check out this article from Insight Magazine published by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai! It profiles the history of microlending in China and tells Wokai's story. Special thanks to article author James Wemyss, president of Wokai's Shanghai Chapter.

bbTV Stops by Headquarters for an Interview

linnea.damer@wokai.org (Linnea Damer) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:16:32 CST

Check out these interviews with Field Partners Associate Liu Limei and Chief of Staff Emily Davis at our headquarters in Beijing! (Audio in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English.)

Wokai Bristol Makes Headlines in the UK

linnea.damer@wokai.org (Linnea Damer) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:10:53 CST

Wokai Bristol Chapter members. [Photo by Nee Hao Magazine.]

Wokai's Bristol Chapter recently garnered media attention for their March 6th Enterprising China event. The evening they organized educated attendees with a panel discussion on microfinance and included a networking dinner. They even managed to squeeze in some fundraising! Many thanks to Ziwei Fan and Mhairi Threlfall for their organizational work and also to their many volunteers whose hard work made this event possible. For more coverage, please check out the full article at Nee Hao magazine here.

Co-presidents Mhairi Threlfall and Ziwei Fan at the Enterprising China event. [Photo by Nee Hao Magazine.]

Wokai on the Radio!

linnea.damer@wokai.org (Linnea Damer) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:05:29 CST

Chief of Staff Emily Davis with interviewers John Berkeley Artman and Yan Yinan.

On March 17th and 18th our own Chief of Staff Emily Davis was interviewed by John Berkeley Artman and Yan Yinan on China Radio International's show China Drive. Check out the interviews here!

The Wokai Fine Art Project Beijing Launch

linnea.damer@wokai.org (Linnea Damer) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:07:52 CST

In June 2011, Wokai commissioned Chinese artist Chen Chunlin (陈春林）to venture out to rural Sichuan province and capture images of our microloan recipients. Prints of these portraits are now on display in Beijing, Shanghai, Toronto, Singapore, San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Seattle. All of these mini-exhibitions have been arranged by our global community of volunteers. We would like to thank our volunteers and the venues they partnered with for their efforts to grow microfinance in China.

Co-founder and CEO Casey Wilson and attendees watching a video interview with Chen Chunlin.

At the Dec 2nd Fine Art Project launch event in Beijing, art and microfinance lovers alike came to see and support Wokai and prints of our borrowers. The celebration featured a presentation by Wokai Co-Founder and CEO Casey Wilson, a video interview with project photographer Chen Chunlin, and a Wokai website demonstration. Special thanks to the Green T House, MQ Wines and Cheers wine for their generous contributions to this event.

Volunteers at the event showing off their Wokai gear.

Event attendees perusing portraits.

Shanghai E4E event: Linus Liang and Embrace

julia.meek@wokai.org (Julia Meek) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 14:53:05 CST

Team Wokai in Shanghai

How many Chinese sports brands can you name?

joshli@gmail.com (Joshua Li) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 22:25:20 CST

Here in Jincheng, fashion for males is dominated by sports apparel. And when there is demand, some company or multiple companies will try to supply that demand. This is very true in Jincheng. Every major sports apparel company has a store here. This was extremely surprising to me because I can’t quite imagine the same thing happening in the US. Can you imagine Nike, Adidas, Puma, Reebok, Fila, etc. all having stores within walking distance of each other in a rural town?

In the past decade, Chinese sports apparel brands have been skyrocketing. One very clear way to see this is to look at Anta, one of the leading sports brands in China. Their stock price has doubled in the last 3 years. Maybe a more obvious way to see this is to look at how many athletes in the past couple years that are now being sponsored by Chinese sports brands. I’ll just list a few here.

Li Ning: Asafa Powell (Jamaican Sprinter), Evan Turner (NBA), Shaquille O’Neal (NBA), Baron Davis (NBA), Alex Bogdanovic (UK Tennis Player), and Spain’s National Basketball Team.
Anta: Kevin Garnett (NBA), Jelena Jankovic (Serbian Tennis Player)
Peak: Jason Kidd (NBA), Ron Artest, (NBA), JaVale McGee(NBA)
Xtep: Birmingham City (English Premier League)

Here's a picture of a Kevin Garnett ad at the Anta store in Jincheng.

At the most recent NBA Slam Dunk Contest, Peak was brought to the forefront when JaVale McGee wore 5 different pairs of Peak sneakers for the contest. And now during the NBA finals, Chinese television keeps putting on commercials with Jason Kidd. Here's a link to one of his commercials.

Many of the world’s most famous athletes are of course still sponsored by Nike. If you watched the French Open finals, Federer, Nadal and Li Na, the first ever Chinese Grand Slam winner, all wore Nike gear. So the question becomes, “can these companies compete against Nike and Adidas?”

Right now Nike and Adidas have major presence in Chinese cities though they have yet to open stores in the more rural areas. The Chinese sports brands have penetrated all the way down to the large rural towns, like Jincheng. Nike and Adidas have said in the press that they might consider competing in more rural large towns but that is still to be seen. Many analysts think that Adidas and Nike should go the way of European fashion design labels in the US and continue to price themselves at a luxury.

One shocking thing I noticed was the price point of the sports apparel here in Jincheng. The Li Ning sneakers, for example, are around 600 RMB which is almost $100 which is also roughly the price of Nike and Adidas sneakers in the US (Other brands are cheaper). How do the kids here afford that? Having gone to an inner city high school, I was reminded that the poor kids would just save money over a long period of time. Learning to save at a young age will probably do these kids some good in the future.

And lastly, I’ll leave you with a question. Don’t you think these logos are quite similar to Nike? Maybe a little bit too similar?

Wokai Development Update

ben@benbenson.com (Ben Benson) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 10:35:56 CST

Another three months has passed since my last update. This quarter much of my time has gone towards long term planning and working out details with outside vendors for projects that have yet to be unveiled (stay tuned!). Still, a number of significant improvements have been made.

Advocate Tracking Tools

A few months ago I released the Advocate Program, where Wokai Members can refer friends and earn impact points redeemable for prizes. In the last few months this program has been further supported with new and improved tracking tools.

Contact Importing -- We now have contact importing working for Google, Yahoo and MSN so referral emails can easily be sent to all your contacts. More ISPs will be supported as APIs are made available.
Referral Codes -- Members can now create their own referral codes so that handing out social cards or even telling people about Wokai in conversation can lead to tracked referrals. Visit the Referral Codes page to create a code for people to enter during registration. Anyone who enters your code during registration will be linked to you as the referrer and you will earn credit for their contributions over the lifetime of their account.
Redeem Codes -- Wokai Advocates can now sell their own products or services and exchange for a Wokai Gift Card Code. The seller simply generates as many Wokai redeem codes as they want and records which codes sold. Later the seller transfers money to Wokai to fund the redeem codes that were sold. This system gives Wokai Advocates complete freedom to fundraise in all kinds of creative ways while greatly simplifying the process of getting donors registered and transferring fundraising collections to Wokai. Advocates will be credited for any new referrals.

New Loan Products

I have changed the way Wokai's generates amortized schedules for loan repayment. The new system is much more flexible and allows field partners to choose exactly how loan principal and interest is broken down over a series of repayments. The system also prevents Wokai from having to write or maintain business logic for each field partner.

Language Preference

Wokai Members can now choose Mandarin or English as their preferred language. All automatically generated emails from Wokai now respect this setting and send a Mandarin or English version. Additionally, Member names are properly handled for last name first or first name first preference. Wokai's blog is also shown in both languages now, just click on the Chinese or United States flag at the top of the page. More work remains to make Wokai's website completely bilingual, but the pieces are coming together quickly.

RSS Feeds and Wokai API Framework

Wokai will soon be integrating with a number of outside websites and mobile phone applications. In preparation, I have put together a REST-style API framework resting upon the same scalable infrastructure and MVC web framework as Wokai's consumer website. More details will be made available once it has passed a piloting phase and I've had time to fully document, but for those of you who have development skills, stay tuned!

In the meantime, we've made a simple RSS feed showing all loans for which we are actively fundraising. Visit /loans-rss.xml to see the XML output.

Financial Posting Journal

I've improved Wokai's accounting system to include formal journal postings which tie together sets of financial transactions that together represent a single business transaction. This makes auditing much easier, allows for batched transactions and is generally more in line with standard accounting practices of much larger systems.

RMB Support

By far the biggest accomplishment I've made in the last month is support for handling RMB. Significant effort was put into reworking our financial model to handle both USD and RMB in cooperation with Wokai's partnership with CPWF (China People's Welfare Foundation), as well as allowing for for billable donors. You may have noticed the USD/RMB symbols at the top of Wokai's website. Now you can switch between either currency and all amounts on the website will be converted on-the-fly. Wokai now settles all incoming funds into RMB at the daily exchange rate (and all previous contributions/donations have also been converted). Choosing RMB as Wokai's standard makes sense for a number of reasons and will keep Wokai operations simpler and allow for future support of other secondary currencies (like USD).

Other Minor Developments:

borrower/loan profile information structure changes
website monitoring service changed
closing of 2010 financials
blog navigation turned session-less

Amazon Cloud Outage

Many of you may have noticed that Wokai's website was hit by Amazon's major datacenter outage last week and was down for a period of almost 20 hours before I gave up looking for signs of control and restored Wokai's service on completely new infrastructure in Singapore. Amazon's outage went on for another four days. This was an unprecedented outage not only for Amazon, but for the cloud computing industry overall. It is clear that they have a flaw in their design and some serious explaining to do. That being said, it only takes one mistake and those of us who have designed or otherwise been around fault tolerant architectures know that it is not a simple thing to build, much less to do it as a consumer service with aggressive feature buildout. Wokai leverages a great number of features from Amazon that we would not otherwise be able to afford, so I for one hope that they will be providing clear details on their architecture design, flaws and all, such that we can build in the safety we need.

At the minimum I was able to prove the resilience of our architecture by how quickly everything was recovered on new equipment, and users in Asia will be happy to find Wokai's website much faster with our new Singapore datacenter location.

Become a Wokai Fellow!

brendan.rigby@gmail.com (Brendan Rigby) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 14:09:06 CST

We will be looking for a highly motivated, self-directed and engaged individual to take up the challenge of being the Wokai Fellow!

What is the position?

Position: Wokai Fellow

Contract: Full time. Volunteer

Location: Jincheng, Yilong County, Sichuan, China

When: Early June 2010 for 5-6 months

Opportunity: Work as Wokai’s Fellow at the Association for Rural Development in Yilong County (ARDY) Work in a small Chinese NGO and get a hands-on experience of how microfinance and other development activities work in rural China. Get a chance to use your skills to lift thousands of people from poverty, test yourself, and gain invaluable experience.

What are the roles & responsibilities?

• Blog about everything you see/experience to allow online users to better understand rural China in the context of Microfinance and Development.

• Financial Reporting: Work with ARDY staff members to maintain, update and improve current financials.

• Translating various documents from Chinese to English and vice versa to better help ARDY communicate with various foreign organizations.

What are we looking for?

• Technical skills: Intermediate level of Microsoft Excel

• Experience working with balance sheets and income statements

• Fluency in English and Mandarin

• Have some familiarity with microfinance and social development

We are looking for someone who is pro-active, intellectually curious and can thrive in a relatively unstructured work environment. Also, being flexible and able to work through unexpected difficulties is a plus – this is rural China!

To apply, please email recruitment@wokai.org, Subject Line: “Wokai Fellow” as soon as possible. Include a copy of your resume and a cover letter explaining why you are interested and qualified. Due to the high numbers of applicants, we regret that we can only respond to candidates that we would like to interview.

Chinese National Treasure

joshli@gmail.com (Joshua Li) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:41:46 CST

As the visa I got only lasts 90 days at a time, I took a trip to Taiwan before re-entering China. On my way back I stopped by Chengdu to see China’s National Treasure. What is China’s National Treasure? it’s the Giant Panda of course!

Giant Pandas are classified as an endangered species and in the past 20 years, China has worked very hard to conserve the remaining areas where wild Giant Pandas live as well as working towards breeding them in captivity.

The Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Base (where I went to see the pandas) has bred over 100 Giant pandas in captivity.

Happy Friday and enjoy the pictures of cute pandas!

Adolescent Pandas napping (They start napping at 11 AM after eating and sleep most of the day.)

Adult Pandas munch for much longer before taking their nap

Can you spot the 4 Panda cubs napping in the tree?

This one finds a new more comfortable position

Apparently Pandas also take multivitamins

Red Pandas are also at the Research Base. Despite its name, Red Pandas are most closely related to raccoons, weasels and skunks (they were originally thought to be in the Ursidae-bear - family)

Karaoke: a cause of death?

joshli@gmail.com (Joshua Li) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 17:04:16 CST

As Evan (the previous Wokai fellow) described in an earlier post, karaoke in Asia (also known as KTV in China) takes place in private rooms that are rented out by groups of friends. As a Chinese-American, this is the only kind of karaoke that I’ve participated in. More of these karaoke joints are starting to pop up in the US and elsewhere. I personally never understood the American model of having karaoke nights in public bars, where the goal is to make a fool of yourself in front of strangers by struggling through a song. I guess Asians are just more private about “losing face”.

Karaoke (derived from the Japanese words for empty orchestra) started in Japan back in the 70s and has now become a source of entertainment almost everywhere in the world. Some interesting facts I learned from perusing the interweb:

1. Karaoke has led to bizarre murders in the Philippines. One incident involved a bar security guard who shot a man singing ‘My Way’ by Frank Sinatra because his rendition was off-key. Go here to read about the ‘My Way’ killings.
2. There is an international karaoke competition: KWC
3. The longest karaoke marathon actually happened in China. I think Wokai teams and Chapters should consider organizing karaoke marathons to fundraise. They could potentially be really successful, since we Asians love karaoke so much.

Here in Jincheng, there are not too many things to do. Karaoke is definitely a go to activity when young people want to get together and hang out. Recently, we headed to a new karaoke place that had just opened. As we arrived, the familiar flashing lights that indicate a karaoke place welcomed us. The hallway, and even the room, was quite psychedelic.

Evan had warned me that certain karaoke places here have a pretty limited English song selection (i.e. limited to Beatles and Boy Bands). I’ll admit that didn’t worry me too much because Backstreet Boys is my go to. To my pleasant surprise, this place had everything from Avril to Usher. Granted, the lyrics on the screen to ‘U Make Me Wanna’ had mistakes and different camera angles of the same blond-haired woman left much to be desired.

Even with the plethora of English songs, I gave in to my Chinese heritage and sang some Mandarin songs. Lucky for me, my parents used to sing karaoke all the time at different church members’ houses and so I had a few famous songs that I had learned way back when (吻别 – Jacky Cheung, 忘情水 – Andy Lau, 哭砂).

Two things about karaoke in China that are absolutely awesome are: 1) the real music videos; 2) the dance videos. In the US, the karaoke places do not have the rights to the real music videos. They play either some screensaver type background or some generic mountain or ocean. Here, for all of the Asian songs at least, they show the real music video, which actually makes a huge difference in atmosphere. Then of course there were the dancing videos. These are song selections that are meant for everyone in the room to dance instead of sing. There are no lyrics, just a video with people dancing. I had never seen this before but it was so much fun.

How to live on $2 a day: it's complex

joshli@gmail.com (Joshua Li) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 14:58:52 CST

Something that I mentioned in an earlier post was that ARDY loan officers would meet with potential borrowers and go over their business plan to determine the amount of money that would be loaned to them. I was thinking about this process the other day and I wondered if there was a way to make sure that they money that they were loaned was actually used for the plan they described. For example, you could go buy a pig if you said you were going to start raising more pigs, but what if you spent some of the money on a different venture and would that even be a problem for ARDY.

The answer came rather quickly while sitting in a training session for the volunteers who are funded by 友成（called Youchange in English）.

友成 , is a Chinese NGO that is trying to foster volunteerism as well as develop non-profit workers. They currently supply the stipends for volunteers at different NGOs and if those volunteers become full-time staff after 2 years, then they will find more volunteers for the NGO. The NGO gets volunteers and potential staff and in return spend time doing a good amount of training. ARDY currently has 6 Youchange volunteers. I think this idea is pretty interesting. It’s definitely beneficial for all. Employees in their first year at any organization usually cost the organization more than benefits because of the time-spent training. This model eliminates the risk of paying for and training an employee that ends up leaving after a year. ARDY has certainly benefitted from it. One volunteer has since become a full-time worker and I think many of the current volunteers are planning to do the same.

In this training session (pictured above), it became apparent that the poor actually have very complicated financial situations. This stems from the inconsistent and variable cash flow streams. For those of us in the middle class or above, we most likely have a salary that provides us a very consistent flow of money. This makes planning pretty easy. The poor do not have that luxury. A farmer might get a good payout when he finally sells a pig he’s been raising or when the demand for vegetables happens to be high on a given day, but what happens on the other days.

An interesting book that came out two years ago called ‘Portfolios of the Poor’ looks specifically at how the poor deals with this issue. Research for the book included year-long studies of different poor families in India, Bangladesh and South Africa and tracks their inflows and outflows of cash and what financial instruments they use to smooth the inconsistent inflows. What they found is that the poor tend to have very complex financial situations. The families that were tracked used many different savings/insurance/loan instruments in order to make sure they had the cash when they needed it. You can learn more about the book by going here. This post on the Princeton Press blog has great links to discussions of the book.

I’m not sure what financial instruments farmers in Yilong County engage in besides loans from ARDY but what I do know is that they understand the wonderful financial concept of minimizing risk through diversification (the age-old saying of not putting all your eggs in one basket). The farmers here know that they can’t rely on any one venture. What if the winter is really bad and the crops grow poorly or some insect comes and harms the fruit trees? Because of this, they all have many small “projects” that they rely on for income. ARDY knows this and understands that the key to successfully making repayments on the loan depends on the overall success of all of the ventures.

ARDY loan officers go over the business plans of potential borrowers and periodically check in on their progress with respect to that business plan. However, ARDY loan officers also must take into account the many other “projects” and understand each family’s entire economic situation in determining the amount a family can loan. It is because of this deep understanding of each family’s entire financial situation that allows ARDY to give out reasonable loans that can both help families improve their livelihoods and ARDY to have such a low default rate.