April 18, 2004 5, was an important day for Andrew Yu and the kids of more than 200 elementary schools in remote villages in China. On that day, Andrew founded 1kg.org (多背一公斤, duā bēi yi gōng jīn), a non-governmental organization (NGO) that sought to build a volunteer network of travelers to help kids in remote areas of China by delivering much needed books and other school supplies. “[The idea came up] in a lunch with a few good friends, also for Sichuan food,” said Andrew. “A friend shared his recent trip to Yunnan Province, where he observed the poor conditions of the local
schools. We talked and all agreed that it is far from enough for only a few of us to bring something to the kids when we travel. We needed more help. So I came up with the idea to enable more travelers to help….” Andrew, known as 安猪 (ān zhū) in Chinese, shared with us how 1kg first got started, when we met with him in Beijing over dinner at a Sichuan restaurant.
I became aware of 1kg.org about two years ago when one of my college friends started to feature the 1kg.org logo as her MSN messenger image. I followed the stories on her blog and was amazed by how many young people were willing to help the kids as volunteers. However, I was disappointed that I didn’t see much coverage of this organization in the mainstream media. (See search result on Google and Baidu.)
Today, 1kg.org manages a database of over 200 elementary schools which includes information on: 1) how many students are in the school; 2) what is the kids’ primary need; 3) the school name and contact person; 4) detailed directions, including method of transportation, of how an independent traveler can reach the school. Last year, more than 130 independent travelers volunteered to carry one kilogram of stationery or books to the kids on the travelers’ trips.
Helping kids on your adventurous backpacking trips is an idea that must come from a true travel enthusiast with a generous heart like Andrew. Not only enjoying travel himself, Andrew also enjoys helping people prepare and share their trips as a moderator of a Ctrip forum. Unlike the United States or Europe, where independent travel (not with a tour package) dominates the market, independent travel in China is very small percentage of the market, even in 2008. Three years’ ago, I can imagine how much less information there was for people to plan a trip themselves, even to well developed tourist destinations like Jiuzhaigou. I don’t think people used the word “vacation” in Chinese very often three years’ ago when there was less disposable income for leisure travel.
“There are more than 400,000 elementary schools in remote villages, but less than 10% of these schools received any sort of governmental or NGO support in order to improve education quality, ” shared Andrew. During the past three years, after many 1kg trips, Andrew realized that “the original idea to encourage more and more travelers to help kids hasn’t changed.” But “[today] I have a deeper understanding of what the kids really need for education, other than books and stationery”.
So, how does 1kg work?
There are only 3 FULL time people for 1kg.org. Suave Su in Beijing is responsible for the website development and maintenance. Vivian Liu (a.k.a. 小V), based in Kunming, Yunnan, is a program administrator. Andrew focuses on PR and marketing. The 1kg website
is 1) a database of the rural village schools with location, contacts, financial status and needs which are collected by the volunteer, and 2) an online communities for volunteers. When traveling to a new destination, the traveler can download a standard form, print it out and give it to a school contract to fill out, after which they can submit all the detailed information online to 1kg. Meanwhile, the traveler can share their experience with the online community. 1kg suggests that travelers pack “1kg more” stuff, like inexpensive stationary or books, and donate them to the schools. By spreading the word on forums and blogs, organizing informal volunteer gatherings, and hosting photography exhibitions in Beijing and Guangzhou, there are now more than 2000 people who take part in the activities.
On the question of why this service model will work, Andrew compares 1kg.org with traditional NGOs in China. He believes that traditional NGOs operate as agents responsible for results, control information, and direct the work of volunteers. This process generates a lots of administration & management cost and leads to low working efficiency. It furthermore limits the creativity and initiative of the volunteers. 1kg, a grassroots NGO, has a different operating model, and is inspired by the social collaboration power of wikipedia, encouraging knowledge creation and sharing to understanding the needs in order to help them.
Andrew has an ambitious objective to reach 5000 schools, cover 1 million students and collect 3 million books by the year 2012. I like his idea to collect 10,000 used computers and set up computer rooms with Internet access for 1,000 schools.
I am not a backpacker. Honestly, I don’t know if I can make my way to any of those remote villages on my trip, but I hope I (and all my friends) can do this at least once. I have a concern that there won’t be enough people that will travel independently to the schools. But when I learned that the profiles of volunteers have started to change from white collars to students. I interpreted it as that 1kg.org has created quite some social awareness of charity action on the younger generation. Today, there aren’t propagandas about “Learn from Comrade Lei Feng” (向雷锋同志学习, xiàng léi fēng tóng zhì xué xí) ” to ask everyone to help others selfishless any more, but more and more people are starting doing it. Maybe I am over concerned. Anyway, besides of hoping for and wanting good things, people also have the needs to do good things for themselves. This is a good experience if you are going to backpacking around China, isn’t it?
Good luck, Andrew!
If you’re coming to Shanghai, you’ll most likely be arriving through Pudong International Airport (PVG). Located 30 km east of downtown, it took over most international flights from the older Hongqiao Airport (SHA) when it first opened in 1999. It is big, it is modern, and the architecture is, uh, big and modern.
