She has such an annoying voice...

Could she ahange her voice one sentence at a time?

white people out to save the world and/or looking for a stepping-stone to a respectable position in finance.

i checked these girls out when they hosted an event NY a while back and was greatly discouraged to find this page on their site.

micro-lending/finance in china is a great idea, but why base your staff in the U.S. where the operating costs are ten to a hundred times greater than in china itself?

the numbers from the link provided above are sadly telling:

FUNDS RAISED: $47,490

TARGET FUNDS: $50,000

What Your Dollars Can Do

$50 One day of professional web design

$100 One month of housing for a Wokai Fellow in a Field Partner’s Village

$250 One week of salary for Wokai’s Director of Field Partnerships

$1,500 One month of salary for Wokai’s internationally educated Chief Operations Officer

$15,000 All Wokai operations for a month

i and others have plenty of cash to support the worthwhile cause of micro-lending in china. but Wokai will get none of it until they cut the bloat in their overhead and start putting contributors' money where it belongs, i.e., in borrowers' hands.

Couldn't agree more whith slowboat.

Danwei please check your facts: "the first foreign-funded microfinance organization in China"??

Ever heard of Planet Finance?

Hate to pile on good intentions, but they're also wrong to claim they're the first foreign-funded microfinance organisation in China unless they're basing that claim on some clever semantics. I was helping administer loans for a foreign NGO in rural China ten years ago, and we were one of the smaller efforts.

Actually Wokai's operations are all based out of China. They have a little office in a siheyuan near Zhangzhi Zhong Lu Subway station on the Line 5.

Also, you can see that they've got some great local guys working for them (around 7 mins into the video).

As for the money they're paying out:
50 for a day of web design isn't too out the question. You're hiring a guy for a few days max for something like this.

The stipend for the Wokai fellow going out to Inner Mongolia is about 800RMB a month.

The salaries for the COO and Field Directors. The Field Director's salary is something like 6,800RMB a month. And the COO makes something like 2,500RMB a month.

And sloboat, I hope you will reconsider contributing your money. The fact is, if you are directing those funds to a borrower, that's where it will go. The link you are pointing to is a fundraising campaign, and the US$47,000 was donated on the understanding that it would go towards operations and not to borrowers. If you choose not to make a donation to Wokai, not a single cent will go into their budget.

There's not that many borrowers up right now, but I think that's part of the process of developing the platform and scaling it. There's a lot of folks helping out at Wokai, and doing it for free. It's honestly, a great cause.

If you haven't figured it out yet, a lot of foreign companies claim 'the first' in China without actually checking facts.

there's a hero for every hour, despite the fact that all charity is motivated by personal intentions, these ladies are making change one person at a time.
Wokai makes it possible for a certain class and kind of American/white person (whatever) to feel like they are making a difference, contributing to a developing China, or forming some sort of bonds with what could seem like a very foreign continent.
Philanthropy is about WHO you know, and if Wokai reaches more/different groups of people, great. Likewise, their high operating costs make them an American-based non-profit, often the difference for people distrustful of organizations based overseas. Nothing wrong with supporting people on both sides of the globe.
Microfinance is great, congrats to Wokai and its founders. I wish more people "looking for respectable positions in finance" had such good intentions.

Wokai makes it possible for a certain class and kind of American/white person (whatever) to feel like they are making a difference, contributing to a developing China, or forming some sort of bonds with what could seem like a very foreign continent.
The joking term for this in my day was "development tourism." Certainly not a terrible or negative thing to be doing, but ultimately no substitute for more thorough-going socio-political change led by ordinary Chinese people themselves.

I have changed "Wokai, the first foreign-funded microfinance organization in China" to "Wokai, a foreign-funded microfinance organization in China."

Alice

hmm. whatev. voice-bashing i find a lil strange. i think we have a case of attractive-nesse.

I don't find Casey's voice annoying at all, and if youtube would load a little more quickly, I'd watch the entire video. From their website though, it looks like a great way to donate money directly to people in need. I also like the extra productive value you get from it being micro-finance. I intend to donate.

@swk, try spell checking one word at a time.