Jah Ying

After completing my studies in June, 2010, I decided to take a gap year to explore my career interests and make a bigger push on my social enterprise projects.

In early June, I started working at the Greater Tumen Initiative (GTI) of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Beijing. The GTI focuses on regional cooperation between four countries in Northeast Asia – China, Mongolia, Russia and the DPRK (commonly known as North Korea). As a Communications Intern, I am largely in charge of maintaining and improving information exchanging between the GTI secretariat and our stakeholders, such as regional governments, businesses, investors and media. I typically do a lot of press releases, news updates, translations and support the preparatory work of various events and meetings.

The best part of the internship, however, is really just being in Beijing. Working in an international environment and at the same time being able to communicate in the local language has allowed me to enjoy a combination of both the expat and local lifestyle. I hang out at 三里屯（儿） and go to independent film screenings, but I also enjoy playing badminton in the morning at 地坛公园 and eating 1rmb 包子 at 蒸功夫. I started blogging about all this on www.eyesonbj.wordpress.com.

My plan for the next few months are still largely up in the air, and may involve an extended stay in Beijing or a move into Southeast Asia. I am currently pursuing opportunities in carbon trading and microfinance in both China and SE Asia – if anyone has any contacts that they could connect me with, I would be very very grateful!

Jack

As you know I am really serious about starting a food waste recycling company so after my graduation in May 2010, I continue my adventure in building the social enterprise. That is tough, in the way (1) My father always discourage me at home; (2) My mother sometimes expressed to me that if I choose to work, she can be retired earlier; (3)Two of my dear working partners decided to quit the company and work in big firms, leaving me alone. That’s pretty sad, right?

So that’s really a huge pressure on me. Luckily, (1) Everything runs pretty smooth afterwards as I secured food and wood waste supply and managed to keep the operation cost very low; (2) I am pretty fortunate to have identified a superior technology that produces compost of high fertility and little odor; (3) I have my girlfriend’s support in the aspects of sales, branding and capital. Now, I have confidence to make things really happen and would expect to have a trial run as soon as September and start operation in late-2010. Below, let me share with you some nice photos.

张帅

自从ECSEL回来之后，经历了魔鬼一般的五月和六月，都是因为一个叫GRE的破玩意儿，每天熬夜到1点，仿佛还是过着美国时差。幸好结果令我欣慰，看看疲劳积累下来的憔悴面容，还是觉得值得的。
人生总不能无止境奋斗，7月，就该是high一把的时候了，于是rock the whole china！——参加了海外杰青汇中华活动，20天左右的时间，从香港、广州、西安、上海到北京，从维多利亚港到万里长城，从中环到陆家嘴，从兰桂坊到后海，从田子坊到南锣鼓巷，我同与我同行的海外杰出华裔青年、内地杰出学生代表一起，去探寻中华文化之根，见证现代中国的飞速发展，在香港出发时受到了曾荫权特首的欢送，在北京人民大会堂结束时受到了贾庆林主席的接见，在新闻联播中亮相，和ECSEL一样，给我的2010年留下了无限美好的回忆和畅想！

赵明

1）大家好哦，我目前一直在运作GSVC中国的项目，资金已经到位，全国网络也一直在铺设，会在9月进行宣传和开始报名。希望大家继续关注比赛，我会带领团队全力筹备比赛，到时候欢迎大家关注和参与，我会及时给大家保持比赛信息的更新，一起加油。如果大家有介绍的朋友或者伙伴可以随时告诉我哦。

2）除了GSVC的运作，此外我在中国石油的战略部门做一个短期的INTERN，不断积累经验和充实自己，努力寻找自己的方向，携手与大家共勉。

杨若云

Project updates

YBD Competition on the go

Currently, finalists of the 1st –round YBD Competition have got enrolled in the mentorship from Oxford Said Business School . This year, YBD China is strategically introducing local mentors into the mentorship process with 2nd round entries to provide more substantial support for Chinese young social entrepreneurs.

Life updates

I am working as a business analyst intern as A.T.Kearney now.

Opportunities in Social Enterprise

Symposium Summit 2010

Theme: Social Entrepreneurship in the 21st Century: Creating New Values and Partnerships for Co-Development (tentative)

Date: 19th & 20th November 2010 (Friday and Saturday)

Time: 8:30 am – 6:00 pm

Venue: The Youth Square, 238 Chai Wan Road, Chai Wan, Hong Kong

Resource: http://www.social-enterprise.org.hk/

Zhangdongli

冬栎在成都避暑期间协助美国的一个团队与成都市高新区创新中心洽谈成立一个针对西南地区的社会创新孵化器。此项目夏季活动资金由麻省理工大学资助，并接受美国几个针对社会创业的风投公司的顾问。我们与当地的一些环保，农业和软件开发方面的初创和成长企业代表进行了沟通，认为中国发展中地区藏龙卧虎但是非常需要创业方面的培训和资金支持。我们希望在明年春夏季召开第一届成都孵化器的系列培训，将邀请资深创业和投资人士进行一对一的指导。如果各位有了解到西南地区哪些大学生或青年创业的模式和点子比较好的，请推荐！

另外，我目前在和VJoin同益网筹划创建一个帮助中国NGO设计市场推广策略和材料的实习项目。主要是培训有一定市场技能和领导力的中国和留美大学生及青年职业人士如何在ngo这个行业中进行市场推广和外展，比如如何tell your story，如何进行online marketing等，并让他们在与我们合作的ngo中有实践和学习的机会。我们目前已经拿到一些培训材料但是还在积极寻找市场营销方面的企业或商学院培训师，希望大家推荐！

张晶琦

我在ECSEL陈述的项目（残疾人助行器）一直持续进行中，并有所深入和扩展。2010年上半年，我们在推广残疾人助行器的基础上，建立了残疾人呼叫中心。5月末参加SIFE CHINA总决赛获得了全国季军，突破了北方赛区所有参赛队伍的最好成绩。

http://chuangxin.dlut.edu.cn/showClassNews.aspx?id=1414

DUT SIFE校园网宣传

http://www.sifechina.org/chi/News_Detail.asp?cid=262

SIFE CHINA官网全国总决赛视频

我们看重的是项目的可持续性，美国之行我得到了很大启发，在注重公益性和社会性的同时，重点逐渐转向挖掘盈利模式。遗憾的是，9月我将到南开大学读研，因此大连的项目退幕后做支持了。相信在南开，我会继续新的社会企业事业。

亲爱的兄弟姐妹，我现在北京海航集团资本运作部实习。刚刚完成和工银国际的合作项目，签发了“海南国际旅游产业基金”，目前接手的是金融地产IPO、REITS。每天往返于三元桥宜必思酒店和海航大厦，时不时要小小的加班。不过郑帅说我气色不错，因为在北京常见到大家，是我开心的源动力！

目前我实习的海航集团正在推出“海慈系列奖学金”项目，分为本科生、研究生、高校年度新锐社团奖学金。

1、本科生

（1）指定目标院校为：北京大学、中国人民大学、南开大学、西安交通大学、上海海事大学、海南大学 。

（2）奖项设置：10人/校

（3）奖励内容：10000元奖金（RMB）+ 海航国内任意航段往返机票1张。

2、研究生组

（1）我国研究生院在读研究生均可申报，申报以项目为单位，完成指定题目的调研报告。

（2）奖项设置：

　    入围奖

　　⒈ 奖项设置： 9个项目/年   ⒉ 奖励内容： 20000元人民币/项目

　　应用奖

　　⒈ 奖项设置： 3个项目/年   ⒉ 奖励内容： 30000元人民币/项目

3、年度高校新锐奖学金近期也将推出

申请网址和具体内容见 http://hr.hnagroup.com/jxj/

Amanda

想了想，还是说中文。我是阿曼达，大家可能不知道，我身边的朋友们都叫我曼达。曼达刚经历了吵吵闹闹的毕业季，最近不小心毕业了，或者说在理论上是毕业了，因为我在修完所有的学分后， 把学籍仍然保留在学校里－方便用学生的身份继续去探索更多的世界，哈。接下来的半年我应该会在印度的Bangalore，为一家社会企业Embrace工作一段时间，大家还记得我们所有人在太平洋大学 （ 哦还好不是西太平洋大学 ！）一起看的TED，记得那个用蓝色保温带保护新生儿的可爱想法吗？他们在2011年将要来到中国了！开拓新大陆什么的，我最喜欢了。现在我仍然呆在又闷又热的上海，过着不怎么清闲的夏日时光，不过忙里偷闲还是读了不少书，最近的强力推荐是《万物生长》的作者冯唐，他本人虽然身为麦肯锡全球董事，却一边颇为文艺地号称要“用文字打败时间” －有人说他的文字是王小波之后世纪初中国文坛最好的收获，我本人还是拼命点头的。话题扯远了，曼达非常的想念大家，真诚地期待再度重逢，再续前缘，或偶遇或相聚，和大家一起进行饮酒，扯淡，旅行，三国杀等优良的中华文化传统项目。”

Zhou Yingke

I am sorry that the project is suspended due to my PhD program.

Right now, I am in National University of Singapore. As you know, Singapore is a tiny garden city. In the near future, I have to focus on the Economics research, both macro and micro economics. The PhD (People have dreams) program will last 4 years. After graduation, I would like to work in United Nations, especially the United Nations Development Programme. To some extend the PhD life is routine and a litte bit boring. But everytime when I think about that I can fullfil myself to benefit our community in the near future, all the worries disappear immediately. Haha~~~for the meet-ups, I am dying to see all of you again!!! The reunion time an place are not problems for me！

Wang dan

My business had been operated well. We opened the first store in Shenyang Wanda Plaza on  May 1st. We launched our website today, which is www.ttwenties.com.  We are working on our Beijing store right now. Wish we could open soon.

I appreciate all your advice and suggestions!

I was chosen as the first and the only Net Impact fellow in China.

If you would like to start a Net Impact Chapter or you have any suggestion or resources on CSR in China, please let me know.

Thanks for your help!

Melissa zheng

How time flies! I miss you all very much! Hope everything is fine and our next reunion.

I have been busy with the school things. But I still want to know more about social enterprise.I read some books about social enterprise. One of them is called 'The Spirit of Social Entrepreneur',which explains the difference between business enterpriser and social entrepreneur and the challenge of social entrepreneur. What I want is to apply the business skills,such as market analysis skills, into social enterprise.

Besides, I participate in a conference called Realizing Chinese Dream. It is amazing, you can feel the strong power of young generation and the bright future of China and the world. I also know some friends who have big dreams and wanna make a difference. Really learn a lot from them.

By far, I am working in A.T.Kearney as an intern. There is a project about NGO, really hope I can join it！ Let's keep in touch!

Lun

I am currently working on impactionow.com and Junior Social Professional Program. Impactionow.com is a student social organization that my friends and I co-founded this year. It is dedicated to discovering social opportunities (including full-time, internship, volunteering, etc.) and promoting social innovation. We also try to inspire new actions and social projects on this platform. You can find more interesting information on impactionow.com.

Junior Social Professional Program is a social internship program that I established to help young talents know better about and grow better in NGOs. For JSP 2010, we cooperated with NPI and APP Huang Yicong Foundation to support its finance and operation. We have recruited 6 six talented young students from universities in Shanghai and currently they are all working hard 6 grass-root NGOs, bringing them to new stages.

We also invited 6 senior coaches (including Calvin, haha) who has social experiences to coach those talents. This is amazing!

Surely we need more people join Impactionow.com and push our innovative projects forward together!

I am currently working at Bain as a summer Associate Consultant.  I worked together with my team for a global alcohol brand owner in this summer and help her design China growth strategies.

The life is somewhat tiring but interesting as I have to continue working on my social projects when I usually come back home at late night. An interesting thing is that I also spare 20% percent of my time in my company and joined a pro bono (non-profit) case. Our client is One Foundation, and our responsibility is to help her design strategies in social enterprise investment. It is exciting!

My friend and I just discovered that Yale University has a very good social enterprise case bank (also online). We have tried to write mail to them and ask for access to these resources for non-profit use. But we still have not received any reply…It would be gift if we can really get some support, haha.

Just come to me for tea or talk when you feel convenient. I am at Plaza 66 at West Nanjing Road.

I am still excited to have my first nano. You know, I have used my 128M mp3 for 6 years…

I just attached 2 photos in which I was doing an orientation session for the JSP students.

Every two months, ECSEL asks its Fellows for an update regardging their social enterprises and life in general. Here's the first part of the most recent newsletter. 

 From Ben Rudick, Director of ECSEL

I am excited to hear updates from all of the ECSEL Fellows! Over here at the Schoenfeld Foundation, life is very busy. We are building ECSEL 2011, making investments, launching programs, donating to charity and doing everything in our power to make the world a better place.

 
Clive Lee:

Project Updates: I have recently founded an NGO, the Envision Hong Kong focus on youth empowerment. This summer, I am organizing a large scale mentorship program, the Youth Envisioning Scheme (YES) with 1000 participants. I would like to inspire the high school youth leaders to contribute to the society through the life examples of young professional mentors. There will be a grand closing ceremony called the YES Summit which is organized by the mentees to recognize their contribution and create a sharing platform for exchanging their ideas. 

Life Updates: I am now in Hong Kong and I shall be in Shanghai for three times this summer for volunteering. I shall be the team leader for the Dragon 100 Forum in August.

Opportunities in Social Enterprise: Please join the Dragon 100 Forum to meet outstanding influential leaders from all over the world. http://www.dragonfoundation.net

Meet-ups: Shall meet Zhang Yuen and Sarah in Dragon 100 Forum. Thanks for Alex and Sarah’s support! They are the overseas and local mentor for the YES program. 

Cool stuff: I am so glad that I was selected to be one of the 25 trainers (and the only Chinese trainer) for Oxfam International Youth Partnerships Kaleidoscope 2010 in New Delhi, India. I shall fulfill two dreams in November; first, to inspire more young leaders from all over the world; second, to visit India, the country with splendid history and culture. It would be great to meet my Indian friends there!

Xia Xiao Zhong

Project Updates:
Actually, we are losing talents in Michigan these two years because of financial difficulties. As I learned from CGIU opening ceremony, former President Clinton introduced a group of people came fromDetroit. They said that lots of workers are losing their jobs in Michigan, in the meantime, lots of new graduated students and professionals are moving out of Michigan and start their careers in other big cities because they think there is no opportunity or future here in State.

So we are thinking of starting a project called Pure Spartan Initiative, collaborating with other organizations, get some big and valued projects for talents who are looking for jobs, especially university graduating students. We will hire a group of students as mentees and provide training by professional mentors. This is the basic idea. I am still designing the process and have to find a way to do marketing.

About the previous project, the wastewater treatment project, my teammates are promoting it to market in Shaoxin. They are also trying to contact some byproducts buyers.

-Life Updates:
I am still in Michigan, United States, doing my internship and an on campus work at the same time. During last few weeks, I worked around 45 hours a week but now I only need to work 30 hours a week which gives me more free time to work on my own stuff. This is the summer holiday time, which makes me much more leisure than usual. I sleep for a longer time than during the school year but I always know that I need to be more efficient and hardworking. So I made some plans for the summer, I borrowed some books from the library and would read them during free time. The book titled The Green Colar Economy is my favourite one. It talks about the current economy and environmental problems. It strongly suggested the society to pay attention to the sustainable development, stating that green colar economy will create more jobs and bring great benefits to the society. The book was published in 2009, you should read it if you have time and interests.

-Meet-ups:
I wish anyone who are coming to the United States next fall would
contact me so that we can meet up in the U.S.

Po Hu

I've just received my Bachelor degree and I am looking forward to my graduate study in US. Recently I just knew an organization working on Social Enterprises in Stanford University. I will try to know more about it and probably introduce the nice part to you all. I so regret that I wasn't able to join latest ECSEL reunions in Beijing, and I'm going back to Tianjin in a few days. I hope there would be oppotunities to meet you guys in the future.

Lee Kaya

Project Updates: What are you working on? How is it going? What do you need?

I am now working as an intern in a Innovation firm,Frogdesign. And for now I am working on a research which is related to sustainable home.( and it will develop some new potential sustainable products or some methods) I know maybe it is a little bit out of  my social enterprise dream , but this project is helping me to clarify my target audience for my future social enterprise Design Care which  helps a lot. Until now I think I need recharge some new business ideas.

-Life Updates: Where are you? How are you? What makes you want to get out of bed in the morning?

I am now still in Shanghai , I looks great but a little bit stressful  because of the challenge work in Frog. What makes me want to get out of my bed is I NEED TO WORK ,haha...that`s a joke, I think sometimes it is because of the exciting work hits to getting up. What I am doing today is one more step  for me to approach  my dream which makes me feel happy.

-Opportunities in Social Enterprise: Do you know of an event, scholarship, competition, internship, or any other opportunity that would be useful for the ECSEL group? Share it here!

Oh yes , I know there is a competition which for some talented innovation minds, this is the link:http://designforthefirstworld.com/,

-Meet-ups: Dinner, drinks, dancing or otherwise---plan a meet-up with your ECSEL friends.

We could find an awesome place to have dinner ,I will do a research later and then maybe karaOK..

-Cool stuff: News, jokes, pictures of cats----whatever you want.

Oh , I want to show your guys some awesome pictures from my web scrapes.It is a bamboo bike.haha.BTW, this is NOT my design, just for fun http://www.flickr.com/photos/bamboozledbren/

Tracy Tang ---Amazing journey all over the world!

Finally I am saying goodbye to my student life! Having graduated from college, I am trying to enjoy this long last summer holiday in my life. I suppose a little bit of slacking and relaxing doesn't hurt...

Right after exams in May, I went to Southern part of Taiwan and then headed straight to Europe, leaving my footprints on London, Venice, Rome, Paris, Barcelona and Brussels. Besides having fun, traveling is always a great opportunity for reflection.

One of the most important lessons learned is that language is really a crucial key to a culture. The more languages you know, the more doors in this world are opened to you.

After my Europe trip, I have decided to pick up a language seriously. Oddly enough, I chose Japanese instead of European languages. I have always found Japanese culture, especially its food, fascinating! In fact, the historical linkages between China and Japan have propelled me to understand Japan better.

If any of you guys have been learning Japanese, I will be more than glad to exchange with you! (I am now going to Japanese class).

As for SE opportunities, I am going to the Think Big Act Big SE workshop this Saturday. It is an experiential workshop to let us rethink how we can make an impact on society. Continue to keep an open mind and hope to get inspiration and insight from it! Will share with you guys later for more.

Hope to see you all soon...

For HK buddies, is it time for us to re-u and hang out :) ?

Tracy

 
Sarah—An amazing girl with an amazing heart

It has been almost 4 months we have not seen one another. I really miss you all. Though our gathering is about 5 months away from now, I am delighted to know that Clive and Zhang Yuan are also the delegates of Dragon 100 Young Chinese Leaders Forum 2010. We are going to Shanghai together in mid-August for cultural exchange and social issue discussions.

I have been very busy this summer. My team won the first runner-up in a business case competition organized by Chartered Institute of Management Accounting. I went to volunteer in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia with Habitat for Humanity. I built a house for a Mongolian family to live in about a week time. I learned a lot of construction work skills in this project – Mongolia Blue Sky Build 2010. I met a lot of international volunteers who are passionate in creating a better tomorrow for the people in need. I got to know a totally new culture as well.

Currently, I act as a mentor in the Youth Envision Scheme which is initiated by Clive in Hong Kong. The Scheme aims to share life and work experience with high school student leaders, and develop their knowledge, leadership, communication and interpersonal skills via workshops. It is a mutual learning experience because I also learn a lot from the mentees and other mentors from different industries.

Indeed, I may want to start implementing my social entrepreneurship idea. However, the main obstacle is that I do not have a team of people to work with me. Therefore, it puzzles me a lot in this summer whether I should go ahead with this dream at this moment. Apparently, I am new to the business world and do not equip myself with adequate skills at present. My business idea is a big and complicated one which requires continued effort even to start it up. Me alone definitely cannot make it work. However, I really do want to treasure this opportunity to make Hong Kong a greener place to live in. Could you all give me some advice or suggestions? I would greatly appreciate that.

Finally, I wish you all have a fruitful 2010 and make your dreams become true. Hope we all can meet in Shanghai soon!

Li Min:

  On December 18th, 2007, Lenovo group set up a program for youth social entrepreneurs, which sincerely invite national wide passionate youth groups to participate in and submit business plans for the social entrepreneurship.

  Since coming back from America, I was taking part in organizing the 2010 venture contestheld by Zhejiang University as a retiring vice president of Lenovo Idea Elite Club (Get more information on www.lenovo.com.cn/csr). During the competition, I met a bunch of excellent teams, some of which are full of energy, capability and commitment for action. One of them is from Zhejiang University City College, whose project is working on recycling paper (milk cartons and juice boxes mainly) by establishing special recycling point and then turn them into notebooks and pens with a local paper mill Fulun. Those notebooks will either be sold by the project team or sent to Hope primary school. The recycling paper project has put into actions in Zhejiang University City College and about 100 notebooks can be put out monthly. Though the project has not yet reached the break-even point, let alone the economies of scale, the project team is striving to perfect their business plan and have won the recognition of the scene judges by their excellent performance. The national finals will be held in this August, I can’t wait to see their wonderful performances.

Right now, I’m really excited about my coming master career in Shanghai Jiaotong Univertsity after my graduation from Zhejiang University. This summer vacation, I’m doing my efforts to pass the driving test and get my driving license. I’m looking forward to our meet-ups and share happiness and fresh thoughts with you~ Be there or be square

Edited by Kevin Zhao---Thanks for your support…Please wait for the next No2 Chinese version

I am so honored to be selected as one of the ECSEL 2010 delegates, a fellowship for Chinese young social entrepreneurs. Together we joined an inspiring journey in San Francisco, Stockton and Miami, networked with outstanding social entrepreneurs and shared dreams to change the world.

This eight-day journey is very important to me at my early stage of starting up a fair trade kiwi fruit social enterprise in Sichuan. It is an initiative for disaster recovery after the "512" earthquake happened and took away over 4,000 houses in the region. I spent two months at Wenchuan last summer to investigate on field and form strategic partnership with the locals. However, since the concept of social enterprise is very new to the country, I got limited support from the government to begin it despite of the promising revenue. I began to search funding and talk with different people. It is how I knew the ECSEL program... I think the best part of the fellowship is that you can meet people like me who share the same passion to build a better world at their young age. Thus, we can share the same feeling about the pain as well as the joy. I'm glad to feel that I am not alone any more and I have great potential partners from HK, Shanghai, Beijing and the State now!! 

Besides, I must share about how much inspirations I got in the summit at the University of Pacific and the Clinton Global Initiative University. Witnessing how the social entrepreneurs were recognized at the State gave me a strong momentum to continue to reach for dreams. The young leaders are so confident and willing to change the other part of the world without hestitation. Those true stories and innovative ideas inspire me to think big and act big for my project now. I am thinking over to start up a youth force for disaster relief and recovery at the next step. With my strong determination, I believe one day my dream will come true.

It is also very beneficial to get networking with the successful social entrepreneurs who can give their advices and supports to us even after the program. Personally, my favourite part of the program is the intensive training workshop on developing a social enterprise through thinking a specific service target. This powerful tool helps me to explain my project idea easily to the audience. We had a chance to practise the tool at the pitch competition. The experience provides us technical skills and solid background to support our social enterprises. Although the program ended already, I am sure those learnings and networks shall continue to support the growth of our social enterprises.  

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the people and donors who make this trip happen. Without your support, I can't believe how can we meet so many influential leaders in the fellowship.

Lastly, I would like to share this quote with all of my friends and those who have the passion to make a difference to the world.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. "

Clive Ka-lun Lee (Hong Kong)

There is probably no better time to recap the whole ECSEL program than now, after a cool shower and one awesome night out on the South Beach of Miami. This one week is certainly one of the most intense and exciting time I had in a very long time.

First of all, I would really like to give a big applause on behalf of the group to the organizer of this event, Ben, Nathan and Deb. They have been so going out of their way to be helpful to us in every possible way. Their dedication and kindness through the whole program is itself an inspiration, in addition to their great work. Also, I would like to extend deep gratitude to Mr. William Schoenfeld for his generosity, incredible social responsibility and commitment to make China and the world a better place.

Except for that, I was thrilled to have the opportunity of meeting some of the truly dedicated social entrepreneurs. The moment Josh Nesbit, founder & CEO of FrontlineSMS, was talking about how they cooperate with other organizations to make it possible for fast and accurate life-saving actions in Haiti after the earthquake, I felt so much emotional turning into a real passion to do similar things. The experience of having those young entrepreneurs sharing their first-hand experiences and ups and downs along the way are truly valuable.

Also, I had a great time at Clinton Global Initiative University. The chance of talking to American students who are of the same age and also dedicated to solving social problems is really important to me, especially because some of them even speak Chinese and have strong interest in having an international aspect in their social cause. I have always regarded those people who have an international horizon and interdisciplinary knowledge most likely to be my friends and even business partners in the future. As a matter of fact, I indeed got connected with many interesting people from top U.S. universities, including those who I believe will be very beneficial to my own projects.

Besides the program events, I think the group itself is a very interesting mix. I not only made friends here, but also could learn from them in different perspective.

Always learn and explore more is what I believe makes life interesting. I certainly wish to bring what I learned here into practice and build up my own social enterprise. I also totally agree with the concept that, one should do the right thing and help the people in a long-term and sustainable way. Either now or later, I believe that this path will eventually lead to my inner peace.

Travelling in 3 different time zones within 3 days is an amazingly crazy journey! To be a social entrepreneur, you always need to be well-prepared to embrace the changes and challenges and to make yourself uneasy to make an easier world!

Here, in ECSEL, although you feel exhausted by the substantial activities, you would never be willing to close your eyes or ears for a second to miss any of the moments, but rather spend all of your time communicating with different people, listening to suggestions from different perspectives, and thinking about how to make a better proposal, better Self, and a better society!

Take myself as an example. I wish to build-up a platform to help the Chinese traditional artisans with marketing and financing work for their creations (handicrafts and other form of art). Originally, it is only an idea in the baby stage, but the ECSEL experience helped me clarify the blueprint for the next step. On the bus towards the lectures, chatting with different students and exchanging ideas about our programs, I got illumination from their projects, and meanwhile, during the answer of “how” and “why” of my project, I considered more deeply issues that I have never thought about before for my project.

The pitch presentation is of great help. During the first round, I got many fantastic feedback, both positive and negative. I feel dividing audiences into two groups with “green card” and “red card” for different voices is extremely brilliant, so that I can get confirmation and also realize my weaknesses. And luckily, I was the winner in the first round to compete for the second. Although I failed in this round, I am excited about other excellent proposals and feel inspired since we have so many friends together to dedicate for a better world. I learned a lot from the winners and feel they deserve the prize. Since all I obtain is warmth and support from peer members and judges, “Losers” doesn’t feel sad, but only feel proud of the winners”. “True love doesn’t necessarily mean gazing at each other, but looking outward in the same direction.” Social enterprise is different from other business field: We don’t have real competitors, but all look into the same direction and work for the same goal. Even when we work in the same field, we only help each other to create a better world instead of competing for the profits with each other. So, ECSEL is just a “family get-together”.

I also learned a lot during other sessions. In the University of Pacific, the speakers were really brilliant and they taught us knowledge and skills, and shared with us their own experiences. I was extremely impressed by a speaker from Stanford's d.school, who taught us to think from the perspective of “customer” by having exercises step by step. I become more clear about what I should do after the explanation, and found out it is really important to put ourselves into others’ shoes.

During the mingling activity in the Univ. of Berkley, we can choose to talk with different social entrepreneurs in different fields around different tables. That was amazing! I was lucky enough to consult a Brazilian-Chinese woman working in the same field of fair trade as my interest and commitment. She has her business in Brazil and China for promotion of traditional handicrafts for many years and has much experience to conquer varieties of problems. I asked her tons of questions, and got all satisfying answers from her. She was so nice that she even gave me the list of the resource I can utilize. We are keeping in touch with each other now, and have talked about my internship following her to study the knowledge and accumulate the experience in this field this summer holiday!!!

During the break, we also have the chances to talk with some great investors. Although one investor told me about the infeasibility of my project and said “I am sorry that all of the similar projects as yours I have known failed”, I still feel benefited, since I know he is just like “Papa” and kindly warned me about the riskiness and also provide useful suggestions to make it more practical.

The founder of this program, Mr. William Schoenfeld, is extremely brilliant and humorous, speaking great “Beijing Qiang”Chinese, also offered a speech, which is so inspiring that I was moved to tears. I know I was so lucky to be selected into this group and really need to work harder to return the society. The program is short, but the influence is sustainable; the delegates are limited, but the people getting involved are world-wide.

I couldn’t think of any program better than ECSEL if young leaders do wish to change themselves and the world---not for the free trip to US with great hotels and delicious food and elaborate care, but for opening our eyes to the world, speaking with the world, and committing ourselves to make a better world with these great people in such wonderful time!

Zhang Yuan, HSBC Biz School, 2010 delegate