Beijing Maple: A mix of simplicity and complexity
“Since its birth,” said Ms Wang Xingjuan, 78-year-old founder of Beijing Maple, slowly and softly caressing her silver hairs back and forth, “Beijing Maple has been keeping its head down on securing women’s endowed rights, arousing their awareness of independence, and helping them keep up with social changes. Of course, our ultimate goal is to accomplish sex equality. ”
Despite its ups and downs, Beijing Maple has not only survived but thrived on its dream. Twenty years is doubtlessly a legendary number in China’s NPO history, not to mention the number of its beneficiaries.
John Wood, founder of Room to Read, talked about women in his autobiography Leave Microsoft to Change the World:
Women lead a tougher life in many developing countries. Usually out of cultural stereotype and male-dominant tradition, their voices are ignored, and their opinions (and more often than not, their life) considered insignificant.
Such inequality, worsened by indifference of the society, has never brought Beijing Maple Psychological Counseling Center for Women (Beijing Maple in short) to its kneel in the past two decades. And it’s the persistent pursuit of wiping out these inequalities that has pulled it through thick and thin.
“Since its birth,” said Ms Wang Xingjuan, 78-year-old founder of Beijing Maple, slowly and softly caressing her silver hairs back and forth, “Beijing Maple has been keeping its head down on securing women’s endowed rights, arousing their awareness of independence, and helping them keep up with social changes. Of course, our ultimate goal is to accomplish sex equality. ”
Despite its ups and downs, Beijing Maple has not only survived but thrived on its dream. Twenty years is doubtlessly a legendary number in China’s NPO history, not to mention the number of its beneficiaries.
“Only unprecedented programs could be funded.”
Funding shortage is a common problem for both big and small NPOs. So the question—how to raise more funds to support more programs and to help more people—comes atop. More profoundly, grass-root NPOs are not granted official registrations in China; so governmental funding is a no-go area for them. . According to Ms Wang, Beijing Maple, having financed itself mainly out of civil funds, has not received a single fund from the government.
So comes the challenge—the funding application procedure. As strict as public bidding in the commercial sector, funding has to go through brutal competition. “Beijing maple has been trying its utmost to think out programs that keep up with and, even one step further, keep ahead of others,” explained Ms. Wang, “because only unprecedented programs could be funded.” Accordingly the essential of NPO operation is not money but programs and talents, with which money may flood in.
Win-win Between Volunteers and NPO
According to Ms. Hou Zhiming, office director of Beijing Maple, Beijing Maple has been built on its respect and research on volunteers since establishment. Over the past 20 years, 200 plus volunteers have been absorbed into programs of all kind, adding up into a compelling force and resource that braced Beijing Maple’s growth.
Beijing Maple insists on a win-win policy for volunteers and the organization itself, as was introduced by Ms. Hou. “We need volunteers’ service as much as they need personal development in our organization,” she continued, “however, we have a maturely strict procedure in recruiting volunteers. After a four-round barrier of application, interview, training and internship, averagely only 20 of the initial 70 plus applicants could be qualified. And this seemingly rigid operation in human resources is actually kind of a must in psychological service.”
In volunteers’ eyes, Beijing Maple is a platform to give love and care, rather than simple labor. Just as love-sharing is of irreplaceable value to charity, so is the self-improvement of volunteers to an NPO. In Beijing Maple, volunteers are fully equipped with the rights to participate in decision-making. They are invited to program planning conferences, and if interested, would be asked to write program applications. Also they are exposed to financial reports, annual plans and the like. More worthwhile to mention is their engagement when the organization is stuck in trouble: more often than not they contribute to problem solutions together with top brass. What’s more, some of them could be sent abroad for further study. But only the luckiest enjoy the opportunity. To cater to most of others, a monthly symposium is held inviting experts from Hong Kong, Taiwan or abroad to present lectures on psychological assistance and other professional skills.
Numbers speak louder than words. Till last year Beijing Maple hotline had 384 volunteers professionally trained in 13 divided periods, of whom up to 64 dedicated five years in Beijing Maple, and 23 devoted more than 10 years. The majority of these volunteers came from universities, hospitals, publishing houses and psychological consultation institutions.
Rights endowing is a dynamic balance, not just a mirage
Since the “social work” concept found its root in China 20 years ago, rights endowing has been repeatedly broadcasted in the circle of NPOs. One of the pioneers in rights endowing research and practice, Beijing Maple has always been an active force in advocating women’s endowed rights as a way to realize sex equality.
Years of observation and practice has filtered through to an in-depth insight over endowed rights. “Time has changed,” said Ms Hou, “so has the tradition that men work outside while women take care of housework. Women nowadays have a bigger-than-ever say in political, economical and social fields.
“However,” she went on after a brief break, as if pondering what to say next, “it appears self-conflicting that given more economic responsibilities, women would have to put aside their roles as a mother, a wife or a daughter, which breaks the traditional balance in a family. But this argument builds on a misplaced presupposition—that women are indisputably bound with family affairs. As a matter of fact, women have rights to their own happiness. In the long run, women would to a great extent, once finding their own happiness and confidence, free men from pressures, which reaches another balance. This is just our ‘dynamic balance theory’ !” Then burst a fit of chuckling.
“So rights endowing is not just a mirage,” she concluded in the end, “when endowing rights to a certain powerless group, you have to take people around them into account. It’s a transition from one balance to another.”
Simple as it sounds, it’s quite complex in practice. And the well-matched mix of simplicity and complexity all comes down to 20 years of regretless hard work. With the groundwork laid through these years, Beijing Maple is gathering power as it’s eyeing the day women in China really become “half the sky”.
“Beijing in Action”: How We Take Action
Beijing in Action (abbreviated as BIA hereinafter), an NPO specialized in providing aids to rural immigrant workers in terms of legal, occupational and psychological consultations, has attracted over 400 volunteers (but only six are all-time staff workers) within less than two years. Thanks to its solidarity and executive force, it gets to where it is. “Love lies in action”, a resounding slogan it boasts, is a reflection of how much it weighs actions. To this end, a stable and well-performing internal structure is the priority issue. Though not a master key for all NPOs, the managerial structure of BIA may well be a showpiece for its counterparts.
Inspired by Hongkong’s NPO development experience, BIA features a supervisory board, the members of which are charged only with monitoring obligation rather than routine management. Theoretically and hopefully, the board may keep the organization from being controlled or used for personal benefits, securing its public and non-profit-making characteristics. Furthermore, being a small team of just six all-time volunteers, it gets round working simultaneously on several programs by lining up the tasks based on urgency degree and then getting them done one at a time.
Concerted efforts prop up high efficiency. BIA has so far extended job, legal and psychological service to more than 4,200 rural workers, answered over 8160 calls on help lines, hosted as many as 86 public events and involved at least 2680 people in these events. A cutting-edge “the helped being the helpful” model was experimented and successfully implemented in these activities. “In essence, NPO is representative of a notion,” said Mr. Han De, administrative officer of BIA, “the message we want to deliver is that people who help others are also helping themselves. And those who receive help can also be helpful to others.” Here in this context, rural workers, though commonly regarded as the powerless and the helped, can virtually be volunteers helping others. For example, a rural worker learned a game in an outdoor activity; then next time he would teach another participant the same game. For the volunteers, they may communicate in an equal atmosphere with each other and with rural workers over concerned issues—the new labor law that took effect in 2008, for instance. Such interactions bring out benefits. For one thing rural workers may walk away from the shadowy sense of inferiority and self-isolation. For the other hand, the volunteers get closer to the rural workers they serve and gain a better view of their life.
In addition, BIA formulated an “immediate volunteering system” to balance against the liquidity and instability of rural workers community. One may attend any interested activity at short notice and register as a volunteer (which is out of his/her own will). Progressively the group of volunteers grows big and gains weight.
Besides its managerial advantages, BIA has solidified itself through a triangular operational model—“on-the-spot activities, BIA hotline and BIA online”, which are respectively aimed at sending signals to people who have joined BIA, who have the will to approach BIA and who have yet to know about BIA. With that, it is hoped more volunteers may gather around and take actions.
Hu Xinyu: Renew Mind before Renewing Walls
Within Xilou Hutong, one of the hundreds of fameless (if not nameless) hutongs in Chaoyang District of Beijing, slumbers a cypress-dotted courtyard. The courtyard, being home to a couple of historical relics protection organizations, is permeated with an air of knowledgeability and responsibility.
At the twilight of an April day, we strolled towards the mystique courtyard, with a hope to visit Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center (CHP).
Previous to the interview of Mr.Hu Xinyu, director in chief of CHP, his monk-like image—carefree and unemotional—loomed in my head, out of the assumption that whoever chooses so peaceful a place to work should be equally peaceful, until a conversation with Mr.Hu, who turned out to be a careful and graceful gentleman. And in no way is CHP built on sand by a bunch of illusionary youngsters, as is misunderstood by some.
Charity—from faith to practice
A volunteer at NPPCN, who once worked with CHP, took down what Mr.Hu called ‘dilemma’ faced by China’s NPO organizers:
“At present, most NPO organizers and volunteers are still faith-driven. Their awareness of responsibility pushes them to be excessively concerned and visionary. So overhead hangs a big question mark for all NPOs—how to turn passion into practice.”
Just as his peers in NPO fields, Mr.Hu used to struggle with such confusions at first. “The most difficult part of NPO is the balance between fairness and efficiency. We were only registered as a non-business organization in 2003, not a profit-making business,” he said, “so we are under great pressure from outside. And it’s real hard to gain an efficient and practicable approach to communicate with other social entities.”
What Mr.Hu spoke out mirrors the essential problem for an NPO. It is far from enough to work with faith, and there is a long way to go for a fantasy to become a fact. In the field of cultural heritage protection, NPOs always have to take blames from all interest groups. For example, people are divided in opposite groups around what to do with ancient buildings. Those who stand up against knocking them down pour blames on cultural heritage protection organizations for failing in conciliation and mediation, while people who stand oppositely urge them to stay out of the trouble. So how could those conflicts be moderated? What should be removed or preserved? After years of exploration CHP has found a way out—to appeal to laws. First of all, it set its own rules and regulations, which are implied in its logo. “The outer profile of our logo is quadrate, suggesting a law-based principle. With that we have a ground and we can hold the line when mediating or even disputing on protection issues. The inner profile is round, indicating flexibility in practice. We take various means to do our job, such as lectures, media communication, or even street work,” explained Mr.Hu at large. When asked if the laws in effect were specific enough to guide the judgment on the removal or preservation of an old building, Mr.Hu responded with a firm voice:
“Yes! But it’s unrealistic to hand everybody a law brochure. So one of our jobs is to inform them of the red line for heritage protection. In fact your confusion is quite typical and informative. You are not clear about the laws. That means we still have a lot to do!”
“It matters more to arouse awareness than to repair buildings”
CHP has its own specifications on the function of the organization:
Collect and sort out relevant files. “For instance we can share academic papers and books online and offline,” said Mr.Hu, “we have a mini-library here that houses books donated from all over world.
Educate people through forums, trainings and lectures.
Build up personal and structural competence.
Plan on specific solutions.
Select problems to address.
With these guidelines, an industrial chain of cultural heritage protection is shaped, compacting ‘protection’ both conceptually and practically.
“Of course, what we are doing now is ‘software repair’ rather than ‘hardware repair’ (which could be our business in future). For now we need to tell the public what and how to protect, which makes more sense than persuading them to repair the buildings,” he said, “more often than not, we have to arouse public awareness to contribute to heritage protection, just like planting a seed. When the seed grows into a tree, people will be pulled together.”
Another concern for CHP is the performance effect it gains from its programs. Performance is widely seen as a weakness for grass-root organizations that are distracted by too wide a spectrum of programs and gathering little fruit. To tackle this problem, Mr.Hu stated that they had already pieced together the programs into a system. “Most of our programs in operation are in Beijing, considering that it has the largest number of buildings and may serve as a model for future work,” he explained, “But it’s impossible to rest assured of all problems with only a single program. Let’s say…the program called ‘The Beijingers’ is a key to another program—‘Media Training Saloon’. The door-by-door interviews spun off an initial database that were analyzed and compared. For example, we made a contrast between Beijing’s hutongs in 2005 and 2007 to learn how quickly they vanished. These data were afterwards used as materials in the media training program that invited influential media representatives such as Southern Weekend, Beijing Youth Daily and Chinese National Geography Magazine. In essence, they got the knowledge and we got their readers.”
Another two programs, namely “Beijing Siheyuan Renovation Training” and “Hutong Culture” were aimed at the residents who lived in hutongs. “We chose those whose dwelling area per capita surpassed 14 square meters as the supporting subjects. We tried to make them realize the houses would be devalued if stripped of their history, and help them with the renovation without ruining original style,” said Mr.Hu excitedly, “in this process, we were melting the awareness of heritage protection into practice.”
In addition to those four cultural heritage protection programs, CHP has completed the first stage of the program “Memos of Ethnic Dai’s Culture” and is working on a book introducing their culture to the public, covering the oral history of their villages and other respects of their culture.
On how to deliver a louder voice to the society, Mr.Hu replied, “if you haven’t heard our ‘voice’, it means we are not doing the best we should. And we also need backup from all walks of life, including a considerable number of volunteers.”
Heritage protection is under way, and it’s a long, long way.
