PAN Jiangxue shed her high salary in finance, her tailored suits and her comfortable lifestyle in favor of running an education charity based on business principles, long-term results and transparency.

In 2002, Pan was working for a bank in Hong Kong when she had a transformative experience on a tourist visit to Aba Prefecture in Sichuan Province. She was stunned by the poverty and lack of adequate education; many children were forced to drop out of what passed for schools to assist their parents.

"I was working in Hong Kong then, and I didn't realize that there were so many children who didn't enjoy the fruits of the country's economic development," 41-year-old Pan told Shanghai Daily in a recent interview at the Shanghai headquarters of her charity Adream Foundation.

But Pan was no bleeding heart. At that time, she was director of China Merchants Securities (Hong Kong) Co Ltd and director of the Educational Website of HSBC Jintrust Fund Management Co Ltd.

After her Sichuan eye-opener, she returned to Hong Kong and started to figure out how to improve the education of poor rural children, find out what they really needed and what worked. Together with former senior management from financial institutions and listed companies, in 2007 she founded a charitable foundation in Hong Kong, Cherished Dream, run by those managers, working with education and other experts.

The goal is to carry out charitable work with a professional business model to help in management and use of public funds. Transparency and accountability are foundation principles.

The official website says:

"In the charity world of idealism, we are dedicated realists. We believe that even if idealism is blazing, it needs to undergo the test of frost. We believe that love is priceless but love comes with a cost."

Wider problems

At first Pan and her colleagues thought of setting up scholarships and sponsoring schools, but then realized that scholarships and boarding schools were available and that the needs were far greater and more complex, involving the problems of China's traditional education system, poor resources in poor areas and the unaddressed needs for pupils' personal development.

Today, Adream (www.adream.org) charitable foundation aims to help children in poor rural and urban areas, giving them personal confidence, interpersonal skills and a high-quality, purpose-driven, not test-driven, education. It provides Dream Centers, Dream Courses, Dream Rooms and Dream Boxes, as educational charity products.

The foundation has established more than 20 Dream Centers in Shanghai schools where the enrollment is predominantly from migrant workers' families.

According to the official website, "From the form to the content, we build a unified and standardized charity service of (like that of a philanthropic) 'McDonald's'."

The aim and motto of Adream is a "confident, unhurried and dignified future." Last year Forbes named Shanghai-registered Adream the most transparent of 25 transparent Chinese charities. It studied hundreds of public and private charities to develop its transparency index.

At a time when Chinese philanthropy was hit by scandals and donations dropped significantly, donations to Adream rose by 82 percent in 2011, compared with 2010, according to the annual report.

The organization sets aside some of the donation for investment. The profit, which is also used in charity projects, is also stated in the annual report (http://www.adream.org/uploadfile/report/2011nb.pdf). According to the report, investment profit decreased by 109 percent; administrative costs increased 66 percent compared with last year, though the rate of increase dropped 12 percent.

"The administration expense increases because the organization expands. We recruit employees, which increases our labor cost," Pan said. "But we still try to reduce costs, thus, last year the growth rate of expenses drops below that of 2010."

According to the Chinese Charity Commission (www.charity.gov.cn), donations nationwide dropped in 2011 to 84.5 billion yuan (US$13.3 billion) from 103.2 billion yuan in 2010. After a major scandal last summer, donations fell from 10.4 billion yuan in June to 1.02 billion yuan in July.

Adream was registered in Shanghai in 2008. It was formerly known as Cherished Dream China Education Fund Ltd, registered in 2007 in Hong Kong.

Frugal life

Born in Beijing, Pan attended the Central University of Finance and Economics.

In 2007, Pan quit her finance job to build her charity along with other financial experts. For four years she and her husband Wu Chong, who is the secretary general of Adream, worked without salary.

"My lifestyle changed greatly. After all, in the past I earned tens of thousands yuan of a month," Pan said. "I started to lead a frugal life after I was involved in the nonprofit organization. I didn't buy new clothes for the past few years."

She described herself as "changing from a woman wearing suit to a woman wearing rash guard." These days at her office in Zhangjiang High-tech Park, she commonly wears an Adream T-shirt and casual slacks.

But changing her lifestyle was easy compared with the problem of setting a clear and effective course for her organization.

At first, like many other charitable organizations, Adream planners expected to sponsor some worthy students and schools in rural areas, but more field work and investigation showed that this kind of help wouldn't meet actual needs, since economic conditions were actually improving.

"In some provinces, the government gave great financial support to education, improving school facilities and giving students' subsidies," Pan said. "Students can study in boarding schools, free of economic pressure."

Their focus then shifted to providing needy students with meaningful, quality education, rather than low-quality, uninspired, standard exam-oriented education.

Most students helped by the organization wouldn't attend college, so the goal became helping them to function well, plan their futures, work toward goals and lead satisfying lives. But neither Pan nor her colleagues in business and finance had professional experience in education. But their project attracted attention and help in the education area, both financial and professional.

"All of the help warms my heart," Pan said, "and some of the stories about how we got that help are rather dramatic."

She recalled how she "accidentally" got the assistance of Professor Cui Yonghuo, an educator at East China Normal University, during a trip to the United States in 2008.

"At that time, former colleagues and I were on a yacht sailing to the Statue of Liberty in US, and some other Chinese people were there too, but I didn't know them," she said. "My former colleagues were curious about what I was doing, so I spent 20 minutes explaining my plan for Adream and wrote down my contact information for them if they wanted to help."

Back in Shanghai, Pan was surprised to receive an e-mail from Cui, who said he learned about Adream from one of his colleagues who happened to be on that yacht in New York Harbor and overhear Pan's plans. Cui recognized parts of Pan's name, searched the Internet and found her e-mail.

Cui helped develop the Dream Courses and is now chief consultant. The courses are central to the Dream Centers, which are purpose-built reading and learning rooms for schools. That's where Dream Classes are offered once a week.

The reading rooms are designed to provide a comfortable environment, while the course aims to improve students' self-image and develop the interpersonal and other skills needed in school and society. It also aims to improve relations between teachers and pupils, which are often strained. Students taking the course are supported in setting goals and working toward them. It helps them believe in their dreams.

The courses are designed for primary and junior middle school students. Younger students learn about getting to know themselves and identify what they want; they read inspiring children's stories and explore basic natural science. Older students learn about their hometown, their country and the rest of the world. They start planning their future jobs or careers and learning about managing money.

The innovative Dream Curriculum is developed by Professor Cui and the Course and Teaching Research Institute of East China Normal University. Content is contributed by companies, training institutes, colleges and many other sources. The curriculum emphasizes diversity, tolerance and self-worth."The reality is that most students we help won't go on to college," Pan said, "so we help them find their place in society as soon as possible after leaving school. Therefore, our courses value questions more than answers, trust more than help and methods more than knowledge."

Pan was gratified that students not only found the courses helpful, but also appeared to enjoy them.

"We once happened to film a student in both ordinary classes and in Dream classes," she said. "A student who slept in the last row in regular class sat in the front row in the Dream class and paid full attention."

"Teachers were amazed, since some of them had very strained relations with students, but the course change the situation. The students started to love study and respect their teachers."

Dream Centers not only serve students but also teachers. Adream provides teachers free training and rewards all teachers who give Dream Courses with opportunities to attend more professional training and advanced seminars.

"We firmly believe that if we want to change the status quo of Chinese education, we need to change teachers first," Pan said.

At the end of 2011, the Dream Center project was implemented in 25 provinces and cities. Altogether, 402 Dream Centers were serving 400,000 students and 20,000 teachers.

Vision

Pan's vision of an efficient, businesslike charity with long-term benefits has been acknowledged by donors, authorities and others in the field of philanthropy. More than 50 companies and institutions have made donations.

Dream Centers received the Most Influential Charity Project Award from the China Charity Foundation. In some areas, such as Barkam County in Sichuan Province, the Dream Course has been listed as a key project in the local government's education plan.

At a time of global economic downturn and skepticism about Chinese charities, Adream is getting increased donations. There's no special recipe, just candor and transparency, Pan said.

"There is one basic common ground rule for doing business and running a charitable organization, and that is being honest," Pan said. "As financiers need to gain the trust of their clients, we also need to gain the trust of our donors and the people we help."

Information is released both to the general public in quarter and annual reports and to specific groups, such as donors, school districts and volunteers, which receive additional information tailored to their issues.

Unlike many annual reports, Adream's reports discuss shortcomings and problems as well as achievements.

(The annual report can be found at the following website: http://www.adream.org/uploadfile/report/2011nb.pdf)

My friend Pan Jiangxue is not an education professional, but she dedicates her time, life, wisdom and all of her love to education. She has helped many people, changed many people, including me. Meanwhile, she changed herself with her selfless love.

- Li Bingting, senior editor of China Teacher Weekly

Through its annual report, the public can learn what good has Adream done as well as its space for improvement. The report can be a guideline for donors and project development.

- Xu Jialiang, professor in the School of Management of Beijing Normal University

Transparency is vital for charitable foundations. Adream's action helps society's monitoring of them, which provides a guideline for charities.

- Liu Zhongxiang, deputy director of the NGO Management Bureau under the Ministry of Civil Affairs

Pan Jiangxue, changed from a senior financier to a charity organization leader, and has accelerated education development in countryside. Furthermore, she manages to make the whole organization run with strict standards.

- 1kg.org, a non-profit organization helping rural childen