On September 21st, "China Philanthropy Talents Development Program" hosted a donation ceremony in Shenzhen Convention & Exhibition center to honor the Top 10 trainees of its first batch of participants.
The Top 10 trainees received RMB 1 million (USD 0.16 million) in total from ACF for the purposes of exploring and developing key charity programs, improving governance and institutions, and capacity building. The Top 10 trainees represented Qianqianai Special Education Training Center of Lianhu District Xi'an City, Beijing Protection & Ease Interactive Technology Development Co., Ltd., Beijing Chunmiao Children's Aid Foundation, Charity Volunteers Association of Loudi City, Environmental Protection Volunteers Association of Tongyu County, Guangzhou Gold-Ribbon Special Children Parents Center, Hongshan Service Center for the Disabled, Zhuoyue Service Center for Community Development of Zhuhai City, Beijing Shifangyuan Nursing Home, and Home for Premature Babies.
Donation Ceremony for Top 10 Trainees
The first batch of participants applied with their programs, including "Star Music Fan" - Musical Treatment for Children with Autism, Protection & Ease Smartphone Solution for the blind, Spring Sprout Medic, Spring Sprout Orphan, Spring Sprout Social Worker, Charity Warehouse, Mom's Workshop, Gold-Ribbon Charity Federation, Mushroom Fun Factory, Knitting Factory, Nursing Home, Premature Babies Weekly, etc. Disadvantaged groups like children, senior citizens and the disabled benefited from the programs above.
Among the 10 programs, some started running not long ago. Some, like Protection & Ease Smartphone Solution for the Blind, started in 2008 with a relatively mature development mode. This program successfully provided solutions for the blind in terms of smartphone services. It had 30 full-time staff providing customer services and more than 40,000 blind users benefited from this program. Ji Dong, Director of this program said that, "There are 17 million blind and sight-hindered people in our country. Everyone needs cellphone and digital devices to better their life. But the biggest problem for them is there are no tailor-made software and supporting courses. We plan to provide suitable software service for 100,000 blind people with lower threshold."
Gold-Ribbon Charity Federation launched by Guangzhou Gold-Ribbon Special Children Parents Center was just starting out. But they took an initial and innovative move by establishing a Charity Federation for Children with Cancer and issuing Guidance Book on Helping Children with Cancer. They paid attention to the children who have cancer, an immature area which didn't get enough attention before. Cui Weixiong, Director-General of Guangzhou Gold-Ribbon Special Children Parents Center, said that, "We hope we can encourage more people to care about the charity of Children with cancer and inspire more programs to be innovative in the future."
"China Philanthropy Talents Development Program" was launched in 2012. More than 900 charity organizations or program leaders applied for this program on chrity.gove.cn. Expert panel consisted of leadership from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, Foundation directors and famous scholars jointly selected 50 most promising philanthropy talents and then 10 trainees came out on top. They were strictly selected and assessed by the expert panel. According to Peng Jianmei, Director of China Charity & Donation Information Center, the Top 10 trainees were selected according to three indices: a comprehensive index, an individual development index and a training performance index. These three indices not only took into account the influence, promotion achievements, sustainability, innovativeness, professional status and credibility of a trainee's charity program, but also the motivation, competence, cultural matching, behavioral style matching, values and training performance of the trainee himself/herself.
Ms. Frances Yu, Director-General of ACF, had high hopes for the Top 10 trainees. She said that, "Philanthropy is a great undertaking and also a tough job. It requires courage and persistence, wisdom and skills, support from all parties and partners holding your hands. We'd love to work with all the philanthropy talents and fight for a better future of Philanthropy."
