by George Bao
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 26 (Xinhua) -- Casey Wilson is an American girl from California. Like many young Americans, she likes to learn Chinese. However, she did not expect that the six months at Tsinghua University in Beijing studying Chinese would have changed her whole life.
She did not return to California to find a high pay job to enjoy her life. Instead, she decided to do something for China, particularly for those living in the poor rural areas.
Wilson was shocked at the fast growing cities like Beijing and Shanghai. She knew that more Chinese have become rich along with the opening of China to the rest of the world in the 1980s, and some Chinese are even wealthier than Americans. However, she also learned that there are over 300 million Chinese who still live below the poverty line in the rural areas.
The American girl knows her own ability is limited, but she also knows if she starts to do something bit by bit, she can make a change.
In 2006, Wilson met with Courtney McColgan, another American girl from California, at a training project in Tsinghua University. McColgan studied Chinese community loans and planned to come back to the U.S. to start her own micro loan foundation.
The two girls decided to start their own loan foundation to help micro-entrepreneurs in China to start small businesses and lift themselves out of poverty.
Wilson raised about 20,000 U.S. dollars to register her own non- profit small loan foundation and built a website called Wokai, which means "I Start" in Chinese, to provide rural entrepreneurs in China with loan capital in the Spring of 2007. At the time, Wilson was 24 years old.
"I love China. I have lived there for four years and I speak the language, I think I can help them," Wilson told Xinhua in an interview in Los Angeles.
Wilson has a Chinese name Wei Kexin. In China, people called her Wei Kexin, and her Chinese is good. She even can understand some Sichuan dialect.
She said she has traveled most provinces in China, but now she travels to Sichuan and Inner Mongolia very often, because most of her micro loans have been released in the two provinces where she thinks there are more farmers who need help.
"Our loan could be 10 dollars but no more than several hundred dollars," said Wilson. She said even one hundred dollars can help a farmer start a micro business and start to make money to support themselves.
Fu Yanjun is a 30-year-old woman in Sichuan. She has two children, but lives in poverty. Wilson loaned 400 dollars to Fu to grow mushrooms at her home. Fu returned the loan to Wilson the next year with the money she made out of the mushrooms and her life is getting better. She is now able to send her children to school to receive better education.
Now Wokai has grown to 12 Chapters across the U.S., Canada and China with over 200 interns and volunteers, 10 corporate sponsors, and two field partners in Inner Mongolia and rural Sichuan.
Since the website launch in 2008, Wokai has raised over 169,000 dollars in loan capital and empowered over 400 borrowers in China to start small businesses. Wokai has offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Seattle, Toronto, Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong.
Wilson said the next two years will be momentous as her team aims to raise over one million dollars in loan capital, connecting 50,000 contributors around the world to over 5,000 borrowers in rural China by 2012.
Wilson's ambition does not stop here. She said ultimately, Wokai aims to become the primary online resource for a growing number of contributors to help China's rural poor lift themselves out of poverty.
Wilson's idea is to help people who needed to get out of poverty by starting their own micro business, not just to give them money. Wokai has cooperated with local foundations to manage the loan with some service fees, but Wilson herself has never got paid with the money donated by contributors. She will make sure all the money contributed will go to those who needed.
She said so far she has received full support from the local governments in China and she has no conflicts with local governments. Also, 99 percent of the loan has been paid back so more people will get help with the fund.
While traveling in the poor rural areas in China frequently to provided help, Wilson also spends much effort in the U.S. to raise money. So far, 90 percent of donations come from Americans who know China or have relatives and friends in China. Most donations are small amount: between 10 to 100 dollars each. The largest amount she has received so far is a check of 50,000 from a Chinese American.
What makes Wokai unique is that donation and borrowing are all transparent over the Internet. Contributors get registered on the website and select the borrowers based on the stories posted on the website. Wilson will update each contributor and borrower once in every three months, and each loan will be followed for three years.
"So far we have found no abuse of the loans and more and more people want to support our work," said Wilson.
