As the new year of 2015 is approaching, free lunch fund and Yidan Chen, the honorary president of Tencent Public Service Fund, will continue to make our efforts on public service, focus on the internet technology and seek ways to connect people. We will keep up the good work and fight for a better world through servicing the public.

(Yidan Chen’s New Year Speech)

My beloved warm-hearted fellows:

Here comes the beginning of a new year again.

At this very moment, we always have to ponder and look back all the things we have gone through. By 2014, the Hope Project has been executed for 25 years. Back then, my classmates and I were in college. In that time, millions of school-deprived children could gain access to education, because a number of people donated money to support the Hope Project. They economized their incomes, withdrew money from their saving accounts and even took part-time jobs. Meanwhile, the Internet Technology was in its infancy stage.

We have been pondering that how to help more people in a better and efficient way via technology. We can see that, in June, 2014, the scale of Mobile Network users surpassed that of PC Network users. The proportion of Mobile Network users took up over 80% of the overall network users. The growing number of mobile network users was the future in progress.

Mobile Network has profoundly changed our world: it has fragmentized our attention. More importantly, it is constructing the methods to spread an event. For example, some events, which would have slim possibility to be known of in the old days, can be widespread to the whole world and discussed by all people in different continents from any social network service. When it comes to the public service area, we should pay attention to the following changes:

First, public service lays stress on interaction and connection.

Public service is more than a single donation. We can interact donators with our projects. The donators can track their donations via Wechat or other social network applications. The updates of projects can be directly pushed to their fingertips. Furthermore, the donations, initiated in social network or the moment in Wechat, connect the donators and their circles. The effect of public service is magnified by the spread from circles to circles.

Second, public service is decentralized.

In the era of Mobile Network, public service organizations, especially large-scale public raising fund, are no longer the center of public service projects, but are organizations that meet internet users’ needs. For instance, in the Tencent public service platform, an individual can not only donate conveniently, but also initiate his own public service projects. In 2014, among over 1000 public service projects in Tencent donation platform, the majority of them were started by individuals.

Meanwhile, we notice that the motivations of Internet users to donate change from love to interests, even to the support to their acquaintances. That's why in the Tencent donation platform, besides collecting sickness treatment fees, we have cultural, environmental and other types of public service donations.  

Third, public service is developing like a snowball.

 From 2008 to 2013, within 5 years, the Tencent donation platform has received 150 million yuan donation. However, in 2014, only in 1 year, the total donation hit 100 million yuan and the person-time donators was over 5 million. The phenomenon is a direct result of the development of wechat, mobile QQ , mobile payment and other social network applications. It is them which lower the threshold and facilitate the donation-making. The year of 2014 has become the mile stone of mobile public service. “In the Internet era, everyone engages in the public service”. We are grateful to have you all in the last year!

Tencent Public Service Fund has successfully explored new methods to serve the public. In LiPing Guizhou, Tencent Public Service Fund built the Dong Minority Ecomuseum. We helped the village develop its economic via internet technology and made it “the first internet village in China”. In Tibet, the Beneficial Hiker Project attracted students to hiking to Tibet and serve the public there. We have built 122 playgrounds in there. In Shenzhen, we will cooperate with the government in Futian District, Shenzhen. Together, we will discuss the possibility to reform the public education system under the example of Shenzhen Ming De Experimental School.

Through the use of Mobile Network in villages, the stay-at-home children can feel the love of their parents working in cities, and those parents can feel the caring of community. Through the Beneficial Hiker Project, so many young people, workers or students, raise fund for those people in need and arouse the others’ awareness of responsibility and citizenship. What’s more, the project can also push the reform of education and explore the internalization of education. In addition, it aims at cultivating innovative talents who love their country, own international visuals and have modern civic awareness.

We sincerely hope that through our sharing those explorations and outcomes, various social forces can copy, modify and promote the experiment. The more number of social forces to involve, the more fields and groups will benefit from the public service.

We acknowledge that technology can make great contribution to the society. Tencent Public Service Fund is always attempting seeking better ways to enhance public service with technology.

In August 2014, Tencent public service released a brand new donation method called “Donate Together”, which is exactly a model basing on mobile platform and social connections. “Donate Together” is more a tool that interact your friends with public service than just a single donation. It makes the warm-heart pass on from circles to circles and makes public service more realistic, more friendlier and more joyful.

  Yidan Chen

New Year, 2015