Two American Women Run Successful Microcredit NGO in China
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Casey Wilson and Courtney McColgan, two young american women, have been running a china-based microcredit NGO called Wokai (which literally means I start in Chinese) since the spring of 2007. The transparent operation can be accessed at Wokai website. The NGO now has 12 groups of over 200 volunteers in North American and China.
Now 25, Casey Wilson came to China in 2006 after her college graduation. She is from San Francisco where she has many friends with Chinese ancestry. While she majored in finance at college, she found time to learn Chinese with the help of a Chinese student. After graduation, she chose to come to China and engage herself in charity work.
She met Courtney McColgan at a training course on the campus of Qinghua University. From Chicago, McColgan had been working in China for three years as a microcredit worker. The two hit off immediately. They had traveled alone or together and found that China is totally different from America. Rural areas in China lag far behind cities in development. They believed the best way to help poverty-stricken rural residents was not cash or material donations, but cash capitals that could help them start their small businesses, make money and improve their quality of life. The two girls decided to create a microcredit organization of their own.
They created Wokai in the spring of 2007. The two girls set up their office in a courtyard house in an old urban street in Beijing. They hired a local employee and started building the website and advertising themselves for small-amount donations as loan capitals.
Their design of Wokai operations is simple and effective and transparent. Wokai has a community of donors around the world. These donors pledge a small amount of money to help rural Chinese through local microcredit organizations. Wokai then collects and maintains information regarding would-be loan recipients and posts this information on its website. Donors can browse candidates and choose which person they’d like to loan money to. Once a loan has been made, Wokai’s field partners work with loan recipients to ensure that they repay their loans on schedule. Once a loan has been repaid, donors can then choose another loan recipient to help with the original funds. This way, one donation can help multiple recipients.
If a rural resident in China wants to get a loan from Wokai, she needs to make a feasibility plan in detail. Microcredit workers will visit the would-be recipient to check the candidate out. If she returns the money and interest in time, she has a good record and her next loan will be easier. One does not need any mortgage to get a loan from Wokai. Wokai works with microcredit partners whose workers are fellow villagers. They not only work closely with recipients but also help them with professional technology. Local people say that they would feel shamed if they don’t pay back the loan on time.
Nearly 1,000 people have donated. About 80% of the donors have some relationship with China. Some of them are from China; some have studied or lived in China; some have adopted children from China. Some donors are based in Canada, Hong Kong and Macao. Wokai does not ask for big donations. They ask for small amount of money. Even 10 dollars can go a long way for impoverished rural residents in China.
Wokai has 150 volunteers based in San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Beijing, and Hong Kong. They promote Wokai and solicit donations on regular basis. Wokai works with some business companies. “Donate one dollar to microcredit in China when you buy an airplane ticket” project goes well in partnership with airlines.
Casey Wilson and her two colleagues take a week-long inspection visit to Sichuan and Inner Mongolia every two or three months. Inner Mongolia in northern China and Sichuan in southwestern China are the two recipient regions of Wokai. They meet with microcredit partners and hear their reports and check accounts. They sample check loan recipients. Casey Wilson sometimes walks three or four hours to visit rural residents to see how Wokai helps them.
By July 2010, Wokai had received about 169,000 US dollars as donations. Since Casey Wilson and Courtney McColgan went online in the spring of 2008, Wokai has helped rural residents in China.
Wokai website gives information on how small loans have helped. 65-year-old Pan Qintai opened a food store in his village in Fangba Village, Zhouhe Town, Yilong County, Sichuan Province. Due to the lack of capital, the business was poor. His request for a loan from local banks went nowhere largely because of the red tape. Pan Qintai turned to Wokai and got a loan of 4,000 yuan in June 2009. With the money, he increased the variety of his goods and decorated his storefront. His monthly income increased by 700 yuan a month. He was required to pay 180 yuan half a month and he has already paid back the loan with interest. After learning Pan’s loan story, 80 households in the town successfully received small loans from Wokai.
Wang Anmin is in his 50s. The 1.53-meter-tall man is a hunchback. His brother is deaf and mute. They worked on their farm and did some chores in the village. But jobs were not so many and payments were meager. In November 2008, a local microcredit partner promoted Wokai in the village. The brothers decided to apply for a loan of 300 yuan so that they could buy a baby pig. They raised the pig and earned a profit of 1,000 after they sold it. With the money they bought a baby buffalo. They raised it and loaned it to villagers to plow farmland for a fee. The brothers were proud owners of two buffalos at the end of 2009 when Casey Wilson came to visit them.
Casey Wilson and Courtney McColgan want to do more. In the next three years, Wokai plans to have 50,000 donors and wishes to solicit 5 million yuan a year. The two girls endeavor to build Wokai up into a world-class microcredit bank for poor people in China.