Features

In 2004 Liu Jingrong decided to make a career change from the business world to the NGO sector, only to find herself constantly cold calling school principals around Beijing from the newly founded Junior Achievement (JA) China’s Beijing representative office.…

The Asia Foundation has been operating in China since 1979 and currently employs 10 full-time staff. Together with local partners it operates a range of programs covering areas such as disaster management and child welfare. CDB recently spoke with the…

In early March, at a village in Rwanda’s Southern Province, a borehole in a schoolyard was repaired after lying abandoned for many years. As the well water gushed out, people cheered, sang and danced in celebration with the realization that…

Finding the questions at pub quizzes a little too male-centric, Scarlet Hoy decided to do something about it. Her frustration led to the creation of “Boobs & Brains”, a women’s quiz with questions targeted at a female audience. Hoy recently…

From Fang Si-Qi’s First Love Paradise by Lin Yi-Han to Know My Name by Chanel Miller and Black Box by Japanese journalist Shiori Ito, Li Ying always prepared multiple copies of the same books on her shelf. “The extra copies…

In recent years, capacity building has become popular in the NGO sector. Various guidelines have been drafted and workshops designed to help organizations “obtain, strengthen and maintain the capabilities to set and achieve their own development objectives over time” (UNDP,…

Anyone who has spent time in Beijing will have noticed the city’s historic hutong streets that predominate within the second ring road. The narrow alleyways lined with traditional Chinese courtyard houses are a popular tourist draw these days, with many…

“120 points! Does it mean, I’ve correctly thrown 12 times? A good score, isn’t it?” “Wow, let me check. Yes, the third best score so far. Congratulations!” said Niu Ruixue, the founder of 27 Yard, encouraging a senior citizen playing…

China’s pet industry is booming. According to CGTN, the 2020 Pet Industry White Paper estimated that 63 million people in China owned about 100 million cats and dogs. While the paper shows that 80 percent of surveyed owners consider their…

On a 2014 trip to Fenghuang county, a popular tourist destination in China’s south central Hunan Province, army veteran Zhang Bing and his friends took turns to drive. “It was around 5 in the morning. We had just passed through…

Every year since 1998, owners of cats and dogs have descended on Shanghai for Pet Fair Asia, which describes itself as the “largest exhibition for pet supplies in the world”. It features a range of competitions including the CKU Dog…

Despite a drop in temperature over the weekend, members of the SURF cycling club gathered near Shanghai’s Huangpu River as usual one Sunday in December. But something was a little different this time: a group of 15 teenagers from Xing…

This is part two of CDB’s interview with staff from the Wei Lan Library initiative. You can read part one here. Wei Lan Library doesn’t just provide books, it provides a public space for children to build connections with their…

This is the second part of CDB’s interview with Zeng Xin, executive director of Hongdandan, a Beijing NGO dedicated to providing services for the visually impaired. To read part one, click here. On a chilly Saturday morning in December, Qin…

Millions of people in China have moved from the countryside to the cities since the country began to open up in the late 1970s. While living standards have risen, economic development is uneven, with many in rural areas not benefitting…

“It’s hard to describe how much I want to try a driverless car. It would be so cool because it could take me anywhere I wanted, without bothering anyone — driverless vehicles can really make life easier for us visually…

Among the millions of visitors to Shanghai’s Expo 2010 was a young Indian architect who had come to China after finishing a stint working in Singapore. For Nitin Dani, it was to be the start of an 11-year journey in…