From hacker to helper of charities

Over the past two years Yiyun has provided its services to more than 20 organizations including Jet Li One Foundation, founded by kung fu movie star Jet Li, Adream China Education Fund, and the YouCheng China Social Entrepreneur Foundation.

Yiyun has also established strong relations with international organizations and has hosted numerous events to cultivate young IT fans or exchange experiences with other IT firms, according to Zhou Li, a co-founder of Yiyun.

Yiyun plans to work with MakeSense, a global IT volunteer network based in France, to host HackSense in December. The event will be a gathering of IT talent from around China aimed at solving charity issues. Companies attending the event are being asked to develop charity apps. Among the proposed apps are an e-commerce platform for disabled artists and an information app for children in rural communities.

One of Wan's passions is stimulating enthusiasm for information technology among young people. By doing this, he hopes to encourage others to follow in his footsteps and use the power of the Internet for good.

Wan's desire to help comes partly from his background. He comes from Jiangxi province, where poverty is rife in many areas. Experience has taught him that with desire there must also be a dose of reality about what can be done.

"You need to balance your capabilities and the interests of people who need your help," he says.

Wan funded the education of poor students in Hunan province during 2006 and 2007. The experience was like putting a drop of water on a desert, he says.

"I wasn't able to solve all of their problems. I funded their education to finish middle school, but after that there was nothing. There are too many children and I cannot help them all," he says.

His experiences have also taught him the dangers of developing dependence on charity. In some areas of China, poor people have become reliant on donations to such an extent that it will be difficult for them to become self-reliant again.

Wan is concerned about the sustainability of charity work in China. "I have a job at IBM China, so I don't take a salary from Yiyun, but most of my staff members are paid employees," he says.

"People may think charity means unpaid work, but I think people should be given a reasonable wage for their work."

Yiyun charges companies that use its on-demand services and is also considering seeking social capital.

"We need them to understand our ambitions because we cannot provide them with short term returns on investment," he says.

Wan's original vision of using the Internet to help charities has come a long way but he has bigger plans in mind. The next step is to provide management software and apps.

"Running a social charity organization is more or less like running a company," he says. "Ordinary people care about transparency, which is a basic issue in charity work. The most important issue is not where the money goes, but how effectively it is used by a charity organization."

Wan hopes Yiyun, like its Chinese meaning, can become a cloud of social benefit which links IT developers, volunteers, companies and organizations together for the greater good.

"In the future, I hope every charity project can share information on the platform so resources will not be wasted and more people can take advantage of the technology we offer," says Wan.

"Charity should be a lifestyle, and I believe with the help of modern technology more people will adopt this lifestyle."