Welcome to Wokai

Our Name

 
我开 wo3kai1: I start [an enterprise]. “Wo kai” refers the opportunity that our organization provides to Chinese micro-entrepreneurs to start small businesses, start change in their own lives, and lift themselves and their families out of poverty.

Our Story 

Wokai was founded in the Spring of 2007 by Casey Wilson and Courtney McColgan, two young women who met while studying Chinese at Tsinghua University. In their travels between rural and urban China, they witnessed the injustice of China’s burgeoning income gap. Microfinance offered a solution, empowering the poor to work their way towards financial independence. With as small as $150, a borrower can start her own business, accumulate savings, and eventually earn a stable income to pay for education, healthcare, and other services. Moved by the cause, they decided to commit their lives to augmenting this type of positive change in China.

Wokai Today

Wokai is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with offices in Oakland, California and Beijing China. Since launching our website in November 2008, Wokai has already raised over US$140,000 in contributed loan capital and empowered over 270 borrowers in China to start small businesses. Wokai has launched 2 Field Partners in Inner Mongolia and rural Sichuan and has built a global community of over 1,000 contributors, 6 flagship Chapters in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, San Francisco, Seattle, and New York, 150 volunteers worldwide, and a core team in Beijing and California. We have also received tremendous media success with features in Newsweek, MSNBC, CNBC, Bloomberg Asia, CCTV, and Phoenix TV.

We rely on the support from donors like you as well as fundraising events, grants, corporate sponsorships and individual donors for funding, to cover our costs associated with Field Partner evaluation, monitoring and training, website development, and public outreach.  We will eventually reach self-sufficiency through an optional 10% donation that donors can add when funding an entrepreneur's loan through our site.

For a detailed description of How Wokai works, please click here.

If you are interested in learning more about Wokai, we invite you to watch this presentation that Wokai's Co-Founder and CEO, Casey Wilson, gave at Google or click on the logos below to check out some of our recent media features.