Theme: Social Entrepreneurship, Equality, and Rural Education

Edward Snowden once said that “Every person remembers some moment in their life where they witnessed some injustice, big or small, and looked away because the consequences of intervening seemed too intimidating. But there's a limit to the amount of incivility and inequality and inhumanity that each individual can tolerate. I crossed that line. And I'm no longer alone.”

For those of us who live well, it may be difficult to appreciate the true meaning of the word "inequality" and the heavy social phenomenon behind it. Inequality permeates every aspect of life, from gender to race, from region to country. All the labeled objects in the world are not equal, and at the same time, unequal objects cannot accept equal allocation of resources.

To take the simplest example, when applying for a job, women are often asked about their choice between family and work, while men are rarely asked this question. Sadly, most people see nothing wrong with this phenomenon, and even those who are aware of it do not react much to it.

But this is something we need to care about and work hard to solve. To some extent, every member of our community belongs to some dominant groups. Maybe we are favored in certain fields of work, maybe we have never suffered racial discrimination, or maybe we don’t need to worry about the cost of living. However, it also makes it all the more important that we understand what is "unfair" and fight to improve it.

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Charlene Ren

Founder of MyH2O

Charlene Ren is the founder of MyH2O Water Information Network, a crowd-based platform that connects clean water resources to rural communities. Water and sanitation data from over thousands of villages have been collected since 2015, and solutions have been delivered to over thousands of beneficiaries. She received her B.A. in Physics from Vassar College and dual M.S. in Environmental Engineering & Technology and Policy at MIT, with a thesis focused on the water and sanitation monitoring policy structure in rural India. She was selected as 1 of 4 Chinese representatives for Homeward Bound 2018 fellow, an initiative focused on raising profiles of women leaders in STEM, ending in a 3-week training2 expedition in Antarctica. She’s also a 2016 Echoing Green Fellow (33 out of over 2000), BBC 100 Women (2019) and Forbes “30 Under 30” (2019) in the Social Entrepreneur category.

Shuai Quan

Founder of MatchEdu

Shuai Quan holds a bachelor’s degree in Communication and Journalism from China University of Communication, and a master’s degree in Leisure Studies from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. After 10 years of marketing in Silicon Valley and 10 years of community youth leadership engagement in Shanghai, in 2017, she decided to dive into the non-profit start-up world when she co-founded an NGO focusing on rural education –– Match Edu. Match Edu has a special entry point in promoting education equality, which is its emphasis on rural teachers. Match Edu is dedicated to improving the rural teachers’ well-being and empowering them to flourish by providing online and offline support. In 2018, Match Edu was selected as Khan Academy’s content partner in China. NYU Shanghai also partners with Match Edu, and many of our students have participated in internships there.

Xingyu Wang

Founder of Beyond the City

Xingyu Wang, awarded Forbes 30U30, graduated from Fudan University with a bachelor's degree in International Politics and a master's degree in International Relations from New York University. As a young entrepreneur and a social entrepreneurship tutor he has spoken in many world-famous forums, such as TEDx and TELL. In 2016, he was the champion of the nationwide famous television program Who’s Still Standing (一站到底). He was featured on the cover of China Youth, and was also on the list of Forbes China 30 under 30 in 2018. As the minister of agriculture and economics in Global Youth Agricultural Development Organization, he co-founded Beyond the City (乡村笔记) a social enterprise that aims to narrow the communication gap between rural and urban areas by using creative education solutions as a bridge.