Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

On my recent visit to Hong Kong, I was able to see the amount of excitement and interest in social entrepreneurism. One had to assume there's a lot going on in China, too, but it's hard to connect with. I just received an update from KK Tse entitled The Most Inspiring Story from the Symposium on Social Entrepreneurship, talking about 1KG More, a social enterprise that implemented Voluntourism: combining backpacking with delivering books and other gifts for rural Chinese children. Their latest venture: Twin books are a pair of selected books for children. If one book is sold in cities, another book will be donated to rural children. The owners of these two books will become a “twin”. Through the twin code in the book, the children in cities can find contact information of rural children on Twin Book’s website and make communication through letters with rural children. The twin book project sold over 2000 fairy story books in 2007 and more than 1000 rural students benefited fro...

The Beijing School for the Blind dates back to the 19th century, back in the days where the colonial presence was strong. The facilities are impressive, more or less brand new. The principal of the school, proudly showed off plans to expand the campus over the next few years, with high quality architectural site drawings that would have looked perfectly in place in Chicago. Our team toured the school. Like many of the agencies we visited, China is also experiencing a significant increase in kids with multiple disabilities. So, in Hong Kong and in Beijing we saw sensory stimulation rooms for these children. These were quite familiar to folks like Frank Simpson of the Lavelle School in New York and Miki Jordan of the Junior Blind of America in Los Angeles. We visited the English language classroom. We enjoyed getting a chance to chat with a couple of the students who were impressively fluent. We were treated to a funny skit about Chinese tour guides for the Olympics. As we headed ou...

The China Braille Press was another impressive visit. Not only do they produce Braille in quantity, but the Press is also developing affordable technology for blind people such as screenreaders and talking ebook players. It's always a thrill to meet a new group that could be solely a traditional nonprofit, but is clearly thinking like a social enterprise! The facility was several buildings in a compound on the outskirts of Beijing. The Wanping area it is in is being preserved. Apparently, the Sino-Japanese war in the 1930s started nearby, at the Marco Polo Bridge. We visited a room full of Braille transcriptionists, mainly working on textbooks. The software they use was apparently written at the Press. You can see Braille visually on the PC screen appearing as they type. For high volume production, special metal plates are made. A programmed machine was punching the Braille into the plates. The Press has several Braille presses, including one they built themselves. We also g...

After a wonderful final banquet with our Hadley China hosts, we got up early to head to Beijing. I was impressed in the airport by a Starbuck's knockoff (check out the color scheme and typefont of SPR Coffee). I ordered a latte and was surprised to find I had just bought a US $12 cup of coffee. Our flight from Fuzhou to Beijing was thankfully uneventful! In Beijing, we planned on combining visiting disability organizations along with a little bit of regular sightseeing. The first disability group we visited was the China Disabled Persons' Federation , which is the main national group. It was founded by Deng Pufang , the son of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. I was a bit surprised that CDPF was pretty dedicated to advancing the rights of people with disabilities, but seemed notably unenthusiastic about the idea of blind people going to university. We had noticed that there were no blind people at one of the big universities we had visited in Fuzhou. There is still a fee...

We came to Fuzhou for a celebration. Celebrating 20 years is a big deal in China. As you might imagine, it's unusual for a U.S. nonprofit to have been in China for this length of time. The big celebration was held in our hotel, which I think is the nicest hotel in Fuzhou. Many top folks from around the country came for an all-morning event with more than a dozen speakers. They included representatives from different schools from around the country, the U.S. Counsel General, a Vice President from the Disabled Persons Federation and a delegation from Hong Kong. A lot of this was celebrating the achievements of Mr. Xia Rongqiang (Chester), the founder and principal of Hadley China. The main curriculum at Hadley China is around teaching English. One of my favorite speakers was a young Hadley student who was quite talented and appealing. As we went around the country, we kept running into former Hadley students and teachers. It's clear Hadley has had a great impact on the bl...

My first stop in mainland China is Fuzhou - 福州 , the capital of Fujian Province. I had heard of the province, but was flabbergasted to not know the name of Fuzhou. Imagine overlooking a city of over 6 million people (described by a Fuzhou native as a "medium-sized Chinese city!"). That's the size of the entire San Francisco Bay Area. I was also surprised by the wealth of this city. My first afternoon in town, I wandered the central shopping district. The products and prices seemed similar to what I'd see in the United States. I mean, the Nike shop and the camera shop had the same products and same prices as I'd expect to pay at a mall in California. In addition to the products and brands I knew, there were quite a number of China-specific brands (like 361 degrees and Sept Wolves). The department stores reminded me a lot of Macy's. One of the key leaders I met described China as "Europe in the cities, Africa in the countryside." Since I didn...

Our flight from Hong Kong to Fuzhou on Dragonair was made much more interesting when we had a ringside seat on a disability rights demonstration! Rami Rabby is famous in the American blind community as the first blind foreign service officer working for the US State Department. It wasn't easy for him: he had to sue them because they wouldn't hire him even though he was highly qualified. It might come as no surprise that Rami is attuned to discriminatory practices and willing to stand up for himself. Rami had been assigned a window seat even though he wanted to sit on the aisle like your typical frequent flier. So, he asked to switch seats with Jimmy Young (son of Hadley School's CEO, Chuck Young). This caused some consternation among the airline staff. Apparently, they have a little manual that says blind people have to sit in a window seat. So, they asked Rami to move, claiming this was standard operating procedure (which it isn't, since we'd all travelled ar...

I'm now on my first-ever trip to mainland China, thanks to the Hadley School for the Blind twentieth anniversary of their China school. It's unusual for a U.S. nonprofit to have a China branch, but truly amazing that it's been there for twenty years. Hadley's brand of distance education for the blind (and people who care about blind people) has been adapted to focus on teaching of English in China. I've always wanted to have a reason to go to China, but there never was a strong enough reason to go for Benetech. Because of Hadley's reputation, their twentieth anniversary was the nexus for many of the top blindness folks from China to come help them celebrate. Since we're a partner of Hadley's (our goal is to be the school library for their students), Hadley's president, Chuck Young, invited me and other Hadley supporters to accompany him and his staff on this celebratory trip. We started our visit in Hong Kong, visiting the three main nonprofits t...

Content access on the internet is a constant area of fascination to me. Hadley School , the main distance education school for blind people in the U.S. turns out to have had a major program in China for almost 20 years, and they have come up with a cool way to use the net. Just got some information on this cool program: The Hadley School for the Blind has launched an innovative program of English language learning and empowerment which spans the Pacific Ocean. Hadley’s international branch is located in Fuzhou, China. In 2005 the principal of Hadley-China, Rongqiang Xia, contacted Hadley students and staff who spoke native English to see if they would like to teach Chinese Hadley students English over the internet. The native English speakers readily agreed, and an international program of empowerment, English learning, and friendship building has existed ever since. Hadley-China students, support staff from Hadley-China, and native English speakers log onto a website at the same tim...