Grassroots NGOs staged at crossroads
- By Jiao Meng
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E-mail China.org.cn, April 1, 2012
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A teacher in Nanning, Capital of South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, leads students in making handicrafts. |
In northwestern China, many organizations that provide rural services and environmental protection shut down or scaled back their operations mid-last-year. Many NGOs that have access to limited funding channels now face an uncertain future, Caixin reported.
Transparency is another hot issue. After a series of scandals related to official government funding, China's charity sector is faced with a severe public trust crisis, making it extremely difficult for grass-root NGOs to secure access to sufficient funding.
In 2011, the Red Cross Society of China (RCSC), China's largest charity, came under fire after Guo Meimei, a young woman who claimed to be a general manager for "Red Cross Commerce," posted photos on the Internet to show off her lavish lifestyle.
Her actions provoked the ire of Internet users who speculated that she might have funded her extravagant purchases by embezzling money from the RCSC.
The RCSC denied the existence of "Red Cross Commerce" and that it employed Guo Meimei, and vowed to set up a public supervision committee and build an online service to increase supervision and promote donation transparency, financial management and fund distribution, Xinhua News Agency reported.
Transforming in Web 2.0
Huang Rufang, founder of China Doll, an NGO focused on patients with a rare brittle bone disease, believes it's time to make full use of SNS tools to publicize and build brand awareness to raise the level of public donations.
"We created a topic on our Sina Weibo to ask netizens to send their well-wishes to Chinese patients afflicted with rare diseases, and received over 500 photos from across the country in just two weeks!" Huang believes this adequately demonstrates the power of SNS tools.
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