Mal-nutrition is a threat to school-age children in rural China: the anemia rate is 18%, stunted growth 26% and vitamin A deficiency 44.1%. A national survey shows wide spread deficiency in calcium, iron, and vitamin A.

Taking a tour to the primary and middle schools in rural China, you’ll see many children there who walk several miles from home to school, eat two meals per days with just simple breads, and have no nutrition catering either at home or at school. Those scenarios you will see are separated but intertwined: because children are living far away from the school, it’s difficult for them to manage three meals per day; because the family is generally lack of knowledge in nutrition, children’s parents or grandparents are just providing whatever they think could fill up children’s stomach such as simple breads; school won’t take this responsibility of catering children’ nutrition needs as they are lacking the resource to handle students’ nutrition issue and at the same time might not lack of the incentives to add this into their Education priority. The school mapping policy (merge different spread out village schools into one Centre Township school so that education resource could be more concentrated to improve the teaching quality) has also significantly impacted rural school-age children’s nutrition in-take as many children have to live even further away from home and do not have sufficient in-take of vegetables and dairy products. Parents lack awareness and capacity to ensure children’s nutrition while no investment is made at school to contra balance the issue. Poor hygiene practice and sanitation facilities also further deteriorate nutrition status.

There are different ways to tackle this issue, either through charitable donation or market solution, but both ways would have difficulties to make a sustainable solution. For charitable donation, it would be very difficult for any organization to continuously provide financial support for food supply within the schools. For market solution, the profit margin will be very little if anyone runs a restaurant in the rural schools, not to mention that rural schools are generally lack of basic facility for restaurant business; also profit driven school restaurant might not be able to meet children’s nutrition needs taken into the consideration of the actual price that rural children’s family can afford.

A good solution that some NGO has been trying to provide is to combine the two, charitable donation and market solution, into one model which is replicatable and sustainable. There has been some School Nutrition Program in Western China run by international NGO and it has proved to be quite useful in tackling the nutrition issue in the rural schools. The idea is to first provide cash donation to help build related school facility such as dinning hall and kitchen in the schools and then start a biding process to recruit local people who are willing to run the restaurant business in the school; there should be a control of the number of restaurants who will get the bid as healthy competition will offer more competitive food price for the school students. After the bidding, specific guidelines on nutrition, hygiene and price will be offered to the school restaurants so that students could enjoy healthy and nutritional food with reasonable price every day at school. As for some expensive nutritional food materials such as meats and milks, creative gift program could be set up to provide subsidies for the students, for example through setting up fundraising campaign to encourage the public to ‘Donate a pig to rural school in China’ and ‘Donate a cow to rural school in China’. Different stocks that have been fundraised could later be bred by either the school or the local village households and be sent to the school restaurants to proceed with a cheap and nutritional menu for school students. In this way, a sustainable model with the combination of charitable donation and market solution is created to help the children in rural schools get the necessary nutrition for a healthy growth.

There are also other ideas to think about along this nutrition program such as: collaborating with the local education bureau, educating the local community -specifically children, parents and village representatives, simple and innovative nutrition measurement system that children will self-administer, integrating external experts support, etc.

The sustainability of a program could always mean creating long lasting motives for community members to work towards the single goal, changing people’s mindset for making better decisions, or advocating a successful model to government so that a right policy could be set to benefit the society long-termly on a while. In the process of designing a sustainable program, it’s worthwhile to always bear in mind that profit generating business model could sometimes be more sustainable than one time charitable donation and this could benefit the some program which could take the advantage of the two.

Coming up this Thursday, we will be hosting the 3rd socialpreneur dinner party… a taco party.

Focused exclusively on supporting the social entrepreneurs, members of Tamar will be presenting the basics of search engine optimization and how to better position websites to gain higher traffic.

So, if you are interested in developing a socially minded business or are already running a social enterprise, please send me an email if you would like to attend.

These are ongoing events, so if you cannot make this one but are interested in joining a future one, please send me an email anyway and I will add you to our SE list.

Rich

rbrubaker (at) allroadsleadtochina.com

Dr. Esslinger is the designer behind the sleek sophistication we see with Sony’s television series by Wagas and Apple’s “Snow White” design language. During the 1970s, early on in Esslinger’s career, designers did not have a prominent role when it came to producing a good. Now, however, they have become more important players with new responsibilities. Dr. Esslinger shares his views on how a designer can incorporate sustainability concepts within a capitalist system of production and what he has done so far in his own company frog design (not capitalized for the Bauhaus concept of nonhierarchical relationships) and at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna with his students.

Below is an outline of two separate talks given by Professor Esslinger on Friday September 19th, 2008.

The Next Apple and Sony
There was a panel of three people talking about design using the case studies of Sony and Apple while trying to answer the question of what it takes to become the next heavy weight brand today. The two supporting speakers were Mr. Sydney Chun from Kohler Kitchens and Lorraine Justice, Head of the School of Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The main speaker was Dr. Hartmut Essliger, founder of frog design and Professor for convergent industrial design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria. Sydney presented on what made Sony and Apple successful in terms of using design as a tool for solving business problems and achieving leadership. Lori, on the other hand, was interested in exploring design differences between East and West. She made an interesting argument about how Sony’s layout corresponds with the East’s visual pattern in terms of being more holistic and viewing objects in a relational manner while Apple represented the West in terms of being punctual with focused detail areas. Stemming from these presentations, Professor Hertmut got into the meat of the discussion on Sony and Apple, remarking that Sony was and is a very undisciplined company, while Apple is on track now that Steve came back to lead the company in the right direction. The reliance on the charisma of a leader makes the industry unsustainable in terms of pushing the envelope for environmental sustainability.

Dr. Esslinger then got onto the topic of his role as the “leader” of frog design. He doesn’t see himself as the main guy; the company operates on a democratic principle and he said, “They don’t have to listen to me. I have to shut up sometime.” This makes the work at the office incredibly dynamic and creative. He also went on to upcoming designers in China. He thinks that there is a huge potential for Chinese designers to bring product back to the center. He cited the example that, in Western countries, designers work on software, the “virtual” design components. Since the factories are in China, they can do more work with the actual material. His example was the iPhone. He thinks the iPhone has great software but crap for telephone design because you are still using a telephone pad to access texts. It’s also awkward to carry and handle. This could be where Chinese designers could really step in a make a difference.

GIGA v5: Green Creative Leaps

Part I The Designer’s Role in Sustainability

Dr. Esslinger opens the GIGA hosted event with global warming and the role designers play in its creation. The proper role of a designer is to “create objects which are useful art, inspirational and use as few atoms and materials as possible.” He criticizes the role of capitalism and its relationship to the designer by saying, “Today’s business mania about ‘shareholder value’ and ‘pleasing Wall Street’ results in more and more incorporate[d] behaviors that promote ‘financially safe’ and ‘politically correct’ conformity [and] stifles creative thinking….” He goes on to say, “As of today, we designers are systemic players in a financially aggressive, economic model which depends on multiplying products into thousands and millions.” In the end, design-like marketing is still about driving mass consumption and that is something a designer needs to acknowledge and address.

So how does a designer begin to address this paradoxical relationship between design and consumption? Esslinger goes through the production process of a good:
1.    Product Genesis (strategy and design)
2.    Production and Operations (applying materials, consuming energy, emitting pollutants)
3.    Usage and Consumption (consuming materials, consuming energy, emitting pollutants)
4.    Recycling (re-using materials, management of disposal waste)

He then goes through how to improve each step starting with 4 (recycling) and working his way up to product genesis. This clip plays cuts off after step 3.

Part II ELF and Open Source Design

Welcome to our community

Health & Sustainability @ Taikang is an association of like-minded vendors in Taikang Lu, represented by Nest, Origin, and Shokay. Situated amongst the original residential community in traditional Shikumen housing and renovated artist factories, Taikang Lu is Shanghai’s precious enclave of unique shops, galleries, and restaurants. From our stores and restaurants here, we seek to promote health and sustainability as a lifestyle choice to our community in Shanghai. This newsletter will include articles of interest along this theme as well as some related events and happenings in the area.

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Last Wednesday, the folks behind Nest brought together their 2nd panel discussion on on sustainable design, and it was a nice evening where the audience learned about why the designers took the paths they did.

Speaking first was of Lin Wen (Bonita) of Brown Rice who spoke of the path she took to not just starting Brown Rice, but she also spoke of all the good things she has done through it

Next was Jamy Yang of Y Town , and unfortunately do to the poor quality of the video I was not able to capture this portion in full, but for this design shop they were motivated not just by designing something new and cool.  Finding ways of using existing materials and finding ways of reducing materials when they designed was one way they look to design products to serve multiple functions and to have longer lifelines as a way to reduce waste.

The final speaker, Rachel Speth - Cofounder Bambuhome and Nest, spoke about her path from a member of Nike’s design team, to their environmental team, to her decision to leave the corporate life to start Bambu home 5 years ago with her husband. Modest to the nth degree, Rachel spoke about the process of developing the products, the process of creating her products, and how they continually look to reduce waste/ reuse materials/ and operate as cleanly as possible (transportation is an area they struggle with).

Next month, on the last Wednesday, Nest will be holding their third and final event and I suggest you check it out. Typically they announce through their Facebook page, but you will also see an announcement here.

To visit Nest (Shanghai’s first artison co-op), go to the website. you will find profiles of their 9 artisen (several of which we have interviewed as part of our video series).

Dell has released their 2008 CSR report (h/t Environmental Leader) and it has a lot of China content in its 112 pages (40 mentions to be exact), something to be expected as Dell has a large investment in an operation in Xiamen.

For those looking to gain a sense of what Dell finds important as a company, you only need to look at the website itself where Michael Dell lists 4 of their operational achievements/ focuses (2 philanthropic focuses are also listed outside of the below):

• Pledging to make Dell’s operations carbon neutral beginning in 2008 .
• Committing to producing energy-efficient products that deliver the most performance per watt for our customers .
• Launching ReGeneration.org , a global meeting place that enables people to learn about going “green,” share ideas and protect the environment .
• Continuing our focus on environmentally responsible product design .

As you can see, all of these goals are environmentally related, and all very worthy on their own right.

I am going to be interested to learn how they intend to achieve these goals (i.e. will carbon neutral be achieve through 100% solar panels or offsetting?  Are their efforts in product design focused on packaging alone, or are they looking to find ways for consumers to reduce their need to scrap a computer carcass every time their Intel chip dates itself?

China though adds another layer, and perhaps were Michael Dell to write a China report, his comments would reflect the fact that with nearly 80% of Dell’s supplier spend in the region, labor conditions are as important as the environment.

Some highlights from their China supplier portion

• Dell brought in its tier 1 and 2 suppliers to a EICC (code of conduct) training session in Shanghai, with those sessions also including workshops on how to create effective manager/ employee relationships, how to mitigate and address child labor, and hiring diversely
• Another workshop was held in Shenzhen to address business process improvement and the EICC.
• Dell has put in place an internal citizen team that identifies high-risk suppliers, arranges site visits , and conducts ongoing evaluation and training

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Social Enterprises in Shanghai, in China, are still a very new concept. Translated as “social business” the term itself is actually one that creates a logical conflict in the minds of many, and that is only the first hurdle. However, there is hope, and there are some business that have succeeded in developing their model and through my interview of Carol Chyau I learn about one successful case, Ventures in Development. Founded in 2004, Ventures in Development is an umbrella organization that was founded by Carol and several others while studying at the Harvard Kennedy school.

One of the first social enterprises I became aware of in China,Ventures in Development have two programs that are operating (at a profit) in the southwest of China.

Working primarily with the Tibetan communities in and around Tibet, the two organizations under this model are quite innovative in their practice as they have taken new products to market through a process that will ultimately involve thousands of yak herders in area. To date, her portfolio of Shokay (Yak fiber clothing) and the Mei Xiang Yak Cheese Group have done very well, and they recently opened up their first store on Shanghai’s Taikang Road.

Through part 1 of this interview, Carol talks about the current state of SE in China, some of the hurdles faced, and some of the steps she took through Ventures in Development to build her platform. In Part 2 she talks more about her programs, the community she works with, the products, and the future of her programs.

Part 1

Part 2

If you would like to learn more about Ventures in Development or Shokay, simply click through.