There is another option for gift giving or even end of the year tax breaks though, and that’s giving to a charity. You can always donate in the name of your gift recipient, and while they might have enjoyed a physical present more, perhaps they’ll be just as grateful not to have to try to figure out how to regift that panda poop tea.

Since charity giving among Chinese has dropped quite a lot this year after various charity related scandals, many charities in China could especially use the boost. Of course we don’t want to see our money siphoned off to line the pockets of dishonest charity administrators instead of really helping those it’s meant to help, so we’ve got to be careful about who we give to. I’ve put together a short list of a few charities working in China that seem fairly reputable, and of course if you’ve got more suggestions please add them in the comments!

1. Half the Sky

Dedicated to bringing the love and concern of family to thousands of orphaned children in China who have lost theirs. Their goal is to ensure that every one of China’s orphans has a caring adult in her life. They provide individual nurture and stimulation for babies, innovative preschools that encourage an early love of learning, personalized learning opportunities for older children, and loving — and most important, permanent — foster homes for children whose special needs may keep them from being adopted.

I’ve personally met Half the Sky workers in local orphanages and seen the great work they are doing.  Without their help, Chinese orphanages would be a much more dismal and horrible place for kids to spend their childhoods.

2. Wokai

Wokai is a microfinance loan provider seeking to create opportunity for those living in poverty in rural China. In their own words:

“Utilizing the principle of microfinance, we connect you with people in rural China who want to start small businesses, but just need a little help getting there. You make a tax deductible contribution to sponsor that person’s loan, watch as they grow their businesses, repay their loans, and lift themselves from poverty. At the end of the year, you re-invest your contribution and help another borrower start a businesses.”

I gave a loan through Wokai last year and earmarked it as a Christmas gift for some of my family back in the US. They really enjoyed reading the stories of those applying for the loan, choosing who they wanted “their” money to go to, and then getting to re-allocate the money after the loan was repaid.

3. Living With Dead Hearts

We’ve mentioned this film being made about kidnapped children in China and we still think it’s a good cause!  It explores the widespread problem of kidnapping through the eyes of parents searching for their children, as well as examining the lives of street children and adults to see what happens to kids after they’re kidnapped. The film is currently in production and is tentatively slated for release in 2012. They are still accepting donations so hurry to be a part of this before they wrap!

4. The Library Project

The Library Project donates books and libraries to under financed schools and orphanages in the developing world. They believe education is the key motivator to breaking the cycle of poverty that exists in the developing world. As they see it, education is change.

I used to work in a library before moving to China, and books have always and will always hold a very special place in my heart. I can’t imagine being without books. As I’m now a teacher, I’d love to see better education here in China. Although it’s also been mentioned on this blog several times already, I couldn’t leave it off. Building libraries in rural schools and orphanages? I can’t say no to that!

5. Bright Connection

The Bright Connection is a rehabilitation center for helping children with cerebral palsy, autism, developmental delays and hearing impairments live as normal people. Located in Sanya, it was founded by Maggie and John Davis whose own adopted daughter suffers from cerebral palsy. When they discovered there were no resources to help parents with these children, they poured their hearts, time, and life savings into creating one. Over the years they have had to keep expanding the center to accommodate more and more children, including several from the local orphanage. They have been featured in the Sanya Expat website as well as the Hainan news. You can see a video about their work and “meet” some of the kids here.

Full disclaimer: I have known John and Maggie since 2005 when I moved to Sanya, and have done some volunteer work with The Bright Connection. Personally I think they are doing a great job!

6. JAR – Jaiya’s Animal Rescue

Our fellow humans aren’t the only ones hoping for a bit of holiday giving. Jaiya’s Animal Rescue (JAR) in Shanghai does an amazing job running a rescue center and animal adoption events. In their words:

JAR is a non-profit small animal rescue group that is committed to protecting and improving the health and welfare of animals through pet health care, education, and the promotion of adoption / fostercare as an alternative approach to purchasing animals. We are dedicated to domestic animal population control, promoting pet adoption/fostering and reducing the incidence of abandonment.

They are currently maxed out with rescued animals and could surely use both financial support, or help with animal adoptions. Also check out our interview with JAR from last year.

Hope you have a great Christmas (or Hannukah, or birthday if you’re like me and celebrate in December) and thanks for checking out these great China Charities! And please, if you know of, or are involved with a good China-focused charity, please make mention of it in the comments.

“What’s this awesome event for?”
We’re providing health kits for rural children in Yunnan Province. Proper hygiene ensures that children can spend less time sick at home or spending half their parents’ yearly wages to treat easily preventable illnesses like dysentery.

To come and observe the fight, the ticket fee is 25rmb. With your 25rmb entry fee, you donate one kit that includes hygienic info pamphlets, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and soap. A portion of the proceeds from the evening will also be donated to the Japanese Red Cross Earthquake Fund.

“How do I become a sumo wrestler?”
You can enter the competition by donating six health kits (150rmb). Not only do you get the chance to wrestle it out in sumo suits we’ll be providing, but you also get a chance to win great prizes from our generous sponsors!

If you would like to enter the competition, email sumosuzhou@gmail.com. Your 150rmb donation will be collected on the evening. We’re looking for 8 males and 8 females… sign up quick!

^* – Insanity is anyone who willingly puts on a plastic sumo suit in Shanghai in July. I’ve 10 fen on all the competitors being disqualified due to TKO before the whistle even blows.

And while time can’t pass fast enough in putting that horrible day firmly behind us all, today is a good day to remember that its survivors are still in need.

Working hard to remind us all of this is a fantastic new project by folk artist Abigail Washburn and Dave Liang of the Shanghai Restoration Project called Afterquake. The 7-track album melds Washburn’s folk with SRP’s electronica and mixes in voices, songs and sounds from the people and places affected by last year’s earthquake.

Abby & Dave with kids in Sichuan

The collaboration was inspired in 2008 through Abigail’s volunteer work for Sichuan Quake Relief where she performed in ‘relocation schools’ with kids from pre-school to high school – most of whom were relocated from mountain villages to schools in new locations far from their families.

“The children and teachers expressed intense grief at the loss of home and family,” says Washburn, a former Sichuan resident featured in Newsweek for her “weirdly wonderful” blend of Chinese culture and American-roots music. “I wanted to return and record their stories and songs in their own voices.”

A kindred spirit was found in collaborator Dave Liang, whose Shanghai Restoration Project combines the sounds of traditional Chinese instruments with hip-hop and electronica. His project has been featured on NPR, KCRW, KEXP and the Beijing Olympics.

A portion of the proceeds from each CD sold will go directly to Sichuan Quake Relief — and while you can buy the CD via Amazon and iTunes, if you go to the official Afterquake shop you’ll be able to help relief efforts even more by purchasing premium CDs signed by the artists, and CDs containing letters from quake survivors and limited photo prints.

This video was shot by Sexy Beijing‘s Luke Mines. More videos/photos are available at Afterquakemusic.com. This video is also available on Youku, but with Chinese subtitles.

(h/t Kaiser Kuo and Youku Buzz)

A Perfect Mother's Day Gift: The Library Project Gift Cards

In typical “me” fashion, I’m figuring out my Mother’s Day gifts at the very last minute. Being that I’m nearly 12,000km from my mom doesn’t make it any easier. My standard go-to is FTD.com where I can browse through a few dozen flower arrangements, settle on something I think is pretty and says “mom” and order everything online. But this year something stopped me.

I sat there on the check-out screen looking at the fact that for a lack-luster bundle of flowers that might live out the end of the week I was going to need to pay an additional 50% in service charges and surcharges. I certainly don’t mean to sound cheap, but when you’re already paying $50-100 on well-arranged garden trimmings, tacking on another $20-25 in charges seems excessive.

So I started thinking, what could I do that would be symbolic, meaningful and wouldn’t assist the racket of a flower industry in business? Then I remembered The Library Project, a fantastic charity organization run by my friend Tom Stader. The Library Project donates books and libraries to under-financed schools and orphanages throughout the developing world (currently largely focused on China, and Asia).

I mean, what better way to celebrate all that our mothers have done to raise us than to honour them with a donation to a cause that helps assure children have the tools to develop and grow.

And while I was just going to throw what I was going to spend on flowers at the Library Project by way of donation and let my mom know, I was happily reminded that TLP has nice looking gift cards in a variety of denominations that feature a “thanks” and a photo of children reading (or looking at the pictures at least).

Unfortuantely my lack of foresight wont allow for the cards to be delivered on time (delivery takes a couple weeks), but regardless – it’s the first Mother’s Day gift I’ve given in a long time that felt like I was actually giving something meaningful.

I’ve spoken about The Library Project before on Lost Laowai, and I can’t laud the organization enough. Their mission of using access to proper reading materials as an enabling stepping stone for pulling people out of poverty is something so fundamentally simple and yet so incredibly valuable.

So, if you’re like me and clicking around frantically for a last-minute Mother’s Day gift, be sure to check out the Library Projects gift cards — or just drop the organization a few bucks on top of what you already got your mom. They really are a fantastic cause who are making a real and practical difference.

There are few things that make me tingle like the principle of microfinancing does. I’d like to think I have a philanthropist’s heart (if not the wallet), and as much as I believe “give it and forget it” charities unarguably do amazing things for this world, microfinancing is just way cooler than traditional charity models.

It brings “charity” down to a more even level, where “givers” become lenders and “the poor” become borrowers. Not only is it financially empowering, but it is emotionally empowering as well. That Courtney McColgan and Casey Wilson (Wokai’s co-founders) have taken this and applied it to China’s impoverished deserves not applause, but ovations.

How it works

With China recently beating out Germany for the bronze-medal spot of world economies, and with it projected to scoop Japan’s #2 position in the next three years, an obvious question is why China? or, more specifically, why shouldn’t China solve its own problems?.

In a recent presentation at a Google Tech Talk, Wokai co-founder and CEO Casey Wilson answered by explaining, “There’s still some huge issues facing China that I really don’t think will be solved by the natural course of economic development.”

Even with a huge economy and lightning-fast development, there are still 300 million Chinese living on less than $1 USD/day (an entire America of people below the poverty line). And though it’s true that China is going through rapid growth and working hard to elevate its people out of poverty, it’s simply not enough.

The country has a widening divide between its rich (largely east-coast) urban areas and the 737 million-strong population in its poor rural countryside.

Wokai Team: Wokai intern Amy Shi, Dir. US Ops Courtney McColgan, CEO Casey Wilson, and Wokai Advisor Tom Gold

As Casey explained to the crowd at Google: “No matter how good of a product we build online, we need a community of contributors to actually access our Web site. So the major question we had while we were developing Wokai was ‘how do we actually build a community of contributors online?’ We realized we really had to go offline to get that community. Unlike Expedia or Amazon, people don’t wake up in the morning thinking ‘how am I going to use this $10 in my pocket to contribute to someone?’

To date, Wokai has built chapters in San Francisco, Seattle and New York City. The chapters are generally made up of professional volunteers working in finance or law, on their PhDs, or involved in Web development – but becoming a chapter member is open to all and the organization is constantly looking for volunteers to open new chapters.

Whether you want to contribute, get involved, or just learn more, be sure to check out Wokai.org.

Also, be sure to check out Casey’s full Google Tech Talks presentation:

Though the region is usually most associated with hot and steamy bamboo forests, when the winter months hit, much of Sichuan is very cold and rainy – a fact that is no doubt looming on the minds of the many left homeless by the May 12 earthquake.

To help with this, Derrick has decided to spend his Christmas holidays in Sichuan “to volunteer and shoot a photo documentary of the lives of the earthquake victims and social workers who are supporting them.”

Additionally, he is raiding his closet and asking us all to do the same to help assure these people who have already endured so much can at least be kept warm.

From the Keep Sichuan Warm Facebook Group:

My social worker contacts working in the region (from Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Guangzhou’s Zhongshan University) tell me that warm winter clothing would be most appreciated and I will be emptying out my closets for un(der)used clothing and bringing it with me on my trek to the villages.

I would like to ask my friends especially those in Hong Kong and southern China to donate whatever warm clothes/toys they can for this effort. If I collect more than I can carry in my luggage on the flight, I will probably post the excess clothing to the social workers in the area.

If you would like to send some winter clothes (new or old), be sure to contact Derrick via the Facebook group, or his Web site (maskofchina.com), for more information.

The result is Boomtown Beijing, a film that paints a picture of not just a city or the sporting event that it will play host to – but rather how a singular event has inspired people to do what in the past was so difficult and dangerous – dream.

The documentary follows the story of three Beijingers – an 11-year-old boy who hopes to be an Olympic torchbearer, a street sweeper looking to put together a mass Olympic countdown performance and a blind athlete that wants one last chance at a Paralympics medal before retirement. The three otherwise disjointed stories come together in the film to tell the tale of a city and a nation that has become intensely ionized by a sporting event, not for the event itself, but for the dreams and imagination it has stirred to the surface.

I had a chance recently to ask Siok Siok some questions about the film. Here’s our conversation:

Lost Laowai: What were the circumstances surrounding your decision to take the plunge and make this film?

Tan Siok Siok: I had this wonderful opportunity to guest lecture at the Beijing Film Academy during the Spring Semester of 2007. The focus of my lectures was documentary production for the international market. Documentary film production does not make the sexiest topic for lectures. So the film started off as a humble means of making the lessons come alive for my students. More than 40 students applied to be part of the project and we picked 4 to serve as assistant producers of the film. The students have an opportunity for hands-on experience of the entire production process from pre-production to filming, and eventually, the distribution of the film to broadcasters and film festivals.

LLW: In what ways did the students add to the creation of the film – and how much did they affect or change your initial vision of it?

TSS: The students helped a great deal in finding the key characters of the film. They also generated visual ideas for the film. Some of the most well-loved segments in the film, such as the scene with military police learning English, came from their suggestions. They were my eyes and ears on the ground.

I don’t think they changed my initial vision of the film but I definitely think they had a big influence on how that vision is realized in its nuances and details.

LLW: You’ve had a successful career working for various large production houses, notably Discovery Channel, how was the process of making your first independent film different from the projects you have done in the past?

TSS: Working outside the paradigm of mainstream TV allows me to break out of conventional narrative moulds. This accounts for the unusual form the film takes.

It is what we, in our jargon, will call an “essay film”. Although the film is often described as a film about three Beijing residents and their Olympic dreams, it is really a film of ideas instead of a conventional story. The central idea of the film is “the city of Beijing the summer before the Olympics.” But my extensive experience in TV has helped make me to make the film watchable and enjoyable despite taking an unusual form.

LLW: What was the largest challenge in making this film?

TSS: The biggest challenge is to find stories that will transcend cultural boundaries visually and emotionally. To find people who will open up to us took a lot of legwork and persistence. I have my students to thank for unearthing interesting characters and finding fascinating scenes.

LLW: Anyone that’s lived in China since the country won the Olympic bid has endured massive amounts of publicity/propaganda about the event this summer. Where does Boomtown Beijing fall in that torrent of information?

TSS: Given the deluge of news about the Olympics, I have been surprised by the warm response to the film. Quite a few individuals have said to me that the film has changed their perception of China and the Olympics. Others have said it has filled a gap in the media portrayals of the Olympic games.

“Watching Siok Siok’s Boomtown Beijing yesterday suddenly gave me a brand new perspective on what the “average” man on the street of Beijing is feeling about their upcoming Olympics, and more importantly how what we feel about China has been largely shaped by what we hear/see what the media has wanted us to hear/see” – SPUG Forum: Hootie

Boomtown Beijing is an attempt to depict the Olympics on a human scale. In making the film, I hoped to encourage a more open and variant perspective on China and the Olympics, beyond the polarized points of views of East and West.

LLW: There’s certainly been no shortage of polarization regarding China and the Olympics lately, largely due to various protests along the Olympic Torch relay route, and the ensuring surge in Chinese nationalism. Have your showings weathered any heated debates?

TSS: Yes, we have had some pretty extended post screening Q&A sessions. One session after the Beijing Film Academy screening went on for more than two hours, more than twice the length of the film itself! I welcome these discussions as they often challenge us to reconsider our own preconceived notions about “film”, “documentary”, “China” and the “Olympics”

LLW: Speaking of screenings, it seems every couple weeks I get a notice of a showing of the film somewhere in Asia. Where are some of the places the film has been shown to date – and where will it be heading next?

TSS: We are doing a series of charity screenings in the final 100 days counting down to the Beijing Olympics. All proceeds will benefit the Library Project, a charity that donates libraries to rural elementary school children in China.

Since the film’s debut in Beijing on April 20, 2008, we have had three events in Beijing and Xi’an close on the heels of one another. In the month of May, we’ll do more screenings in Beijing, Guangzhou, Singapore and possibly Shanghai. In June, there will be a tour of major US cities.