Ending Poverty in China: How NGOs can play a role

The World Bank
Wenkui Liu

students aided by “New Great Wall” Program

Another example is our “breadwinner” medical aid program launched in June 2016. The program is promoted extensively online and raises money and mobilizes resources in the counties and cities where beneficiaries live. This helps us provide medical aid to poor families to prevent them from falling to poverty as a result of the medical costs of seriously ill family members.

“Philanthropic Commune” (shanpin Gongshe) and “Beautiful Countryside” are two other examples of business model innovation and efficiency improvement.

The advance of internet technology has opened up many more possibilities in reducing poverty. The biggest challenge for farmers in poor areas is lack of market access for their products because of their remoteness, transport costs and lack of marketing expertise. CFPA has successfully piloted e-commerce projects to address this challenge.

In March 2016, we were able to help orange farmers in Ya’an, Sichuan to sell 50,000 kilograms of oranges in three hours through e-commerce. Ya’an orange became the first product of our “Philanthropic Commune” E-commerce Program, followed by Hanyuan cherries, Mt. Mengding kiwi fruits and many other farm products. This program has generated considerable income for many poor farmers and also demonstrated the potential of business model innovation.

“Philanthropic Commune” E-commerce Program in Sichuan

Our “Beautiful Countryside” Program started during post-earthquake reconstruction in Ya’an. As opposed to simply rebuilding damaged houses and roads, we made an additional investment to develop tourist facilities. We helped set up a village tourism cooperative among villagers, and rebuilt villagers’ houses into quality homestays. Villagers benefited from tourist incomes just within three years. We are now scaling up the approach in Sichuan, Guizhou and Hebei provinces.

villagers’ houses rebuilt under the “Beautiful Countryside” Program

Our experience shows that NGOs can play a huge role in poverty reduction. First, NGOs can complement government in mobilizing additional resources for the benefit of a greater number of people in need and improving program results through our involvement in project management, monitoring and evaluation.

Second, NGOs can bring in more innovative solutions, such as multi-party co-financing, participatory decision-making and beneficiary capacity building.

Third, NGOs’ participation in global poverty reduction can facilitate cooperation to share these experiences and tackle global poverty.