“Tomoroe” or 途梦 (Tu meng), the English name combining the words “tomorrow” and “to more”, is a not-for-profit project founded by Chongqing native Yang Xueqin that invites outstanding professionals from all walks of life to share stories of their professional journeys with middle school students in remote areas through online videos.
The not-for-profit, to date, has invited over 500 professionals from 150 different professions to take part in live streams, benefitting the career developments of over 50 thousand students.
From 2012 to 2014, Xue Qin worked as a teacher at “Teach for China” (美丽中国) in Lincang City in Yunnan, witnessing first hand the lack of vocational and career education resources for rural students in these remote areas. After returning to Beijing and continuing to work for Teach for China, Xue Qin interacted with various companies, and by October 2015 the first Tomoroe “sharing event”, with 60 student participants, was held at a Teach for China project in Guangdong.
Xue Qin’s founding idea was to develop Tomoroe into an online platform. She believed that not only was this the perfect way to develop career growth education for students in remote rural areas, but also a way for professionals to get involved in societal and philanthropic work.
Although her idea was supported by many entrepreneurs, Xue Qin faced many challenges from big businesses that labelled her project a failure and told her that her dream of an online platform would never succeed. She persevered, and by June of 2016, the Shenzhen Tomoroe Education and Public Welfare Development Centre (深圳市途梦教育公益事业发展中心) was successfully registered in Shenzhen as a non-profit.
By the end of 2016, Tomoroe partnered with “ClassIn”, gaining lifelong free membership with the educational software that provides online teaching used by many big companies such as ATA and Xin Dongfang. This partnership legitimised Tomoroe and propelled it into the new world of online education, so it could finally achieve the aim of becoming an online platform for career development.
Tomoroe still faces many challenges as an online platform. Xue Qin wants to find a way to not only provide free career development education for students in remote rural areas but also explore revenue options for businesses. China Minsheng Bank and the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation have funded Tomoroe with 500,000 yuan through the “ME public welfare innovation support program”.
Tomoroe’s current aim is to provide 40 million rural middle-school students and 30 million urban middle-school students with career development education through online class sharing.
