Part 1: Wokai.org
Visited Wokai.org and talked to its founder, Casey over Spring break to get to know about these two organizations involved in China. Wokai.org is a “Kiva clone” which specializes in China;
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?
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
