Notes on Meetup: Non-Profit, Rural Development, Land Right, Microfinance in China

Here are my notes from the meetup "Non-Profit, Rural Development, Land Right, Microfinance in China" on Oct 7th, 2009 in Redwood City, California:

A common theme is that the two presenting organizations are foreign NGOs(non-profit organization) in China, so they are not required to partner with local governments. They hand-pick their local partners and provide better transparency on their funds and operations in China. In contract, local NGOs have to work with local governments which have little accountability. Also, there's no tax saving for donors in China for charity-giving.

Presentation from Keliang Zhu @ RDI(Rural Development Institute)

• Land is the #1 source to empower people in poverty in the world. It gives a mean for poor to have a sustainable living
• Many people in rural areas in China don't have ownership proof of their own lands. So it's easy for local government and corporations to come and take away their lands on a very cheap price
• RDI does field work and research on rural land issues, provides free legal services to advise people on how to protect their lands, and advises the Chinese central government.
• In China, starting in 1990's, government issued land use certificate for 30 years to people in rural areas. But the current policy doesn't clearly define what will happen when the 30-year land use certificate expires.
• RDI has a micro-land ownership program in India that buys lands and lend them to people that don't have lands, so they can make a living by farming on the lands.
• RDI also focuses on women's land right because "assets and income in the hands of women results in better nutrition and welfare for the household than when in the hands of men."

Presentation from Casey Wilson @ wokai

• wokai provides microfinance services to needed people in rural areas in China. Its model is to take donation(not lending), distribute in microloans, and redistribute paid-back money. On the other hand, Kiva, a big name in microfinance world, takes money in lending, and pays back lenders. So Kiva facilitates the lending, not donation.
• wokai is a foreign NPO in China because there's special regulation in China on microfinance. Wokai doesn't do fund raising within China because it's not a domestic NPO. It mainly targets expats, oversea Chinese that connect to China
• wokai's microloan interest rate is around 17%. It sounds high. But it's actually low compared to the normal 30%+ by other microloan programs. 17% of interest can barely cover the cost of all the program administration, field worker traveling to remote rural areas.
• wokai is currently focusing on Inner Mongolia, Ningxia and Sichuan provinces. It has a thorough process to pick a local field partner institution. It has been training and working with local field partners to do due diligence, accounting and financing on microfinance loans.
• Check out Aimee Barnes's interview with Casey. It's pretty thorough.

In the meetup, I also met Joey from HELP(Human and Environment Linkage Programme) that's focusing on helping people in Wolong Nature Reserve for Giant Pandas in SiChuan China.

RDI, wokai, HELP are always looking for volunteers. Go check them out!

Tags: china meetup wokai rdi land right microfinance non-profit