Charity organization gives young Africans a vision for the future

Changes bring growth. This is what happened to Liu Yimenghan and the Africa-based Chinese charity organization he works for.

The 24-year-old has been living in Nairobi, Kenya for nearly 13 years since his mother relocated there to pursue business after leaving China.

In 2015, Liu joined the Dream Building Service Association, a nonprofit organization committed to uplifting the lives, and promoting the empowerment, of the younger generation in vulnerable areas.

Now in charge of the organization's programs in Africa as DBSA's co-founder, he meets and talks with people from schools, local employees, government officials and also Chinese charity institutions.

"I'm doing things that I never imagined I would do when I was young," he said.

Liu went to primary schools in five different locations in China and Africa. Frequent changes in his living environment made him a solitary person.

As the only foreigner in the community primary school in Nairobi, Liu remembered how he was often by himself in the yard with mud, small animals, tree leaves and fruit, an experience that his peers in China would find challenging.

In 2015, after selecting a course about community services in college, Liu spent a year working as a volunteer teaching mathematics, English, science and even Chinese songs at Chang Rong Light Centre in Nairobi's Mathare slums.

Mathare is Kenya's most densely populated area, with 68,941 persons living within a square kilometer in contrast to the national average of 82 persons per square kilometer, according to Business Daily, Africa's leading business publication.

The low-income settlement, with a population of 206,000, experiences a number of social and health challenges, ranging from cholera outbreaks to gang violence and dilapidated buildings due to unplanned developments and a lack of essential amenities.

The center, which provided primary education for 214 students, was constructed out of flimsy corrugated sheets of iron before being renovated in 2014 by five young Chinese volunteers who later founded the Dream Building Service Association.

To better communicate with local people, Liu also took internships at the Kenya Wildlife Service and United Nations Environment Program. He even spent two months in Tanzania working as a researcher for consultancy firm McKinsey and learnt several African tribal languages.

In 2017, he attended a summer camp in Harvard University on public welfare training. He overcame his natural shyness to share with others the problems and difficulties his organization faced.

"It helped to change the way I think and communicate. It is so far the biggest change I underwent," he said.

The motivation for Liu to engage in public welfare was to try to bring about change through his own efforts.

"It is not an easy thing as you would encounter many difficulties and problems during the process. Sometimes you wanted to give up," he said.

"But changes do happen when problems are solved. Then the changes make my work meaningful and I decided to keep on with it."

In 2017, Liu and his partner cooperated with the Chinese charity organization Free Lunch for Children and launched a special program in Africa. The program has been providing free meals to more the 10,000 students in six African countries, including those from Mathare.

His organization also partnered with over 20 schools in the Mathare slums to carry out different projects, including talent shows, art exhibitions and soccer tournaments.

When learning about the COVID-19 outbreak in China, the primary school principals at the Mathare slum told Liu that they also wanted to do something to support the Chinese people.

As a result, they recorded a video in which about a thousand Kenyan children chant "Stay strong China "with slogans like "China We Stand with U" and "Together We Can Defeat Corona".

The principals even initiated fundraising for China's fight against the novel coronavirus disease. A total of $100 was collected, which can pay for more than 300 free meals for the children.

"The highest respect to show for such good blessings is to accept them," Liu said.

However, prejudice and misunderstanding still exist between people of the two countries with different cultures and languages due to a lack of communication.

For example, Liu doesn't think it is a good idea for NGOs to simply provide financial or material assistance to local communities.

"The more we offer, the more possible that some people in the communities will only treat us as cash cows. Accumulated conflicts of interests finally lead to contradictions," he said.

Liu said he understands that for children living in African slums, the possibility that their destiny can be changed with assistance from short-term volunteers is as slim as winning the lottery.

"But I want to change such prejudice held by some local people that the Chinese people come to Africa only to make money. Even business interests are involved sometimes, I want to let them know that we are still working wholeheartedly to help improve their conditions through our public welfare services," he said.

A growing number of Chinese enterprises in Africa are encountering the same situation.

Even though the companies have helped greatly improve the local infrastructure and brought business opportunities to the continent, they are not always welcomed by locals.

For example, some Africans think that more Chinese people in the continent has intensified local unemployment. The Chinese are not only making money of local people, but also taking their jobs away, they wrongly believe.

"Communication is an important thing. Without enough communication, one side's negative thinking of another side will only get deeper in the mind and even turn into hatred before obtaining any understanding of the other side," Liu said.

Looking into the future, he hopes he could build a bridge of communications that will help change the way how Africans regard people from China.

"It will be good if there is a certain kind of channel for the two sides to communicate in a better way, but it is also a very difficult thing," he said.