About Charlotte: Co-founder + a brief overview

Hello there!  Thanks for taking interest in our works!  I believe you've already had a very good idea of our team's spirit after reading Sean's self-introduction - he is always so full of energy!  Having known each other since Project SEE in 2007 (he went to Kolkata while I went to Kazakhstan! we'll dig deeper into these experiences in upcoming posts), we actually didn't talk much until one day in late 2010 we bump into each other randomly and he asked me "are you interested in joining me to help people in Kolkata? in a bigger scale?"

"Yes, that sounds exciting!".  With a few ideas in mind, we started to think of ways to make things happen.  Top of our mind are sponsoring drop-out slum kids education and skills sharing to improve employment opportunity.  But how do we make those happen?  We've talked to advisors from school, successful NGOs, emerging charity groups, experienced organizers...etc and we conclude that we can only take it step by step!


As a social sciences graduate, I'm good at writing and liaising with people, so I think I can give Sean a hand in the fundraising process, publication as well as coordination.  Previously, I had been involved in financing an aspirational youngster's 4-year university education, and that was a really rewarding experience!  Leveraging this and other fundraising experiences, I strongly believe that it is very important to keep the proceeds use transparent and accountable, while striving to understand how charity can be motivated.  Besides our vision to enable receiver community's self-sufficiency, we constantly remind ourself it is paramount to stick to the values of integrity, accountability and transparency.  Therefore, all financial and procedural processes are well documented and available upon donors' request.  Almost one year into our projects, I have to thank my family and friends who have been so supportive all along, and without their kind advice and 360C assistance the roads might have been a lot bumpier.

After a couple of projects, increasingly I find it very important to have people with different talents on the team.  A can-do spirit is also quintessential to build up lasting trust and relationship among us, as our team's backgrounds are so diverse and we collaborate heavily with our Indian partner NOG to make things happen.  On education sponsorship, we may be able to source fundings from Hong Kong but it really relies on our Indian partner to mentor the children personally.  On skills sharing, in our pilot project in 2011 summer, we delegated our fellow HKU students to serve Kolkata's women's employment needs, while encouraging our delegates' personal growth at the same time - we are conscious that a good mix of team should include multicultural and cross-discipline backgrounds: business, engineering, arts, science, Chinese Medicine, policy & law.


However, to make our works more effective and expansive, deeper professional know-hows are much needed.  For instance, to answer Kolkata's needs for basic water sanitation, a volunteer with practical engineering background would be very valuable.  Luckily, with the help from our circle of friends, we're able to find a like-minded engineer, Gigi, to do an initial analysis of & recommendations for the problem (we'll talk about that in detail in an upcoming post).  We appreciate the pro bono help we receive and would love to listen to your ideas about how your professional know-hows can help stretch our program.



Currently, we focus on serving Kolkata area, and the ongoing initiatives and issues that interests us include - women's health, population control, possibility of social enterprise set-up, fair-trade link with HK.  Feel free to drop us a line, or email at impact.for.peace@gmail.com to talk about your ideas, opportunities for cooperation or simply anything.  And we welcome supports in any form of professional advice or financial assistance.

Charlotte