Light of Love: TFish Fund Capacity Building Program Testimonial

The Light of Love Public Welfare Development Center is located in Nanjing, China. It is dedicated to the development of rural education and community public welfare.

Our nonprofit “Light of Love” first began in 2008 and completed the registration process on June 15th, 2013.  It is the first nonprofit in China to focus solely on drug safety, drug development, and health services. We aim to help everyone take better care of their health, minimize cases of drug over-use, and prevent illnesses, and as a result lower governmental expenses for medical services. 

Our organization began working with Transparent Fish Fund in 2011, when we started a free lunch program for poorer children at an elementary school in Zunyi, Guizhou with the help of TFish. Since 2011, we have grown together with Transparent Fish Fund. Back then, “Light of Love” was still a high school club working with other nonprofits. That experience was our first time working with “Transparent Fish Fund,” a nonprofit that advocates financial transparency. During 2011 and 2012, while we participated in TFish’s financial training program and worked with them, our organization began to organize our own finances and categorize and record our budget and expenditures. During this time when we focused on finances, we found a great mentor and began to use a great method to keep our finances in order. All of this proved to be very important to the development of our organization later on. TFish’s project funding application is very detailed, which taught us to be specific and thorough and gave us more experience with applying for funds to complete projects later on. 

In 2012, “Light of Love” began planning to become something more than a high school club, and to register as an official nonprofit organization. Mr. Dai Xianwei, who is the person in charge of our organization, asked Mr. Ping Chao for advice regarding launching a nonprofit. At that time, “Light of Love” was experiencing hardships such as being unable to pay our employees. Mr. Chao agreed to cover the administration costs of “Light of Love” and to help Dai Xianwei start his nonprofit. From this point on, the organization began to develop along the right path. 

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In December of the same year, Dai Xianwei again received Transparent Fish Fund’s invitation to attend a financial training session in Beijing. This time, Mr. and Mrs. Chao and Director Nguyen all came to Beijing Normal University to host the training session. Because “Light of Love” had just registered as a nonprofit, Dai Xianwei came to from Nanjing to Beijing with a lot of questions that needed to be answered. Upon meeting Mr. Chao, Xianwei received monetary support for his administration costs. Xianwei also discussed with Director Nancy Nguyen about the future development of our organization. Director Nguyen told Xianwei that since he is now the person in charge of his organization and that since the organization is also now an official nonprofit, he and the organization would need to continue learning new skills and trying to find a method for self-sustaining development. If we can achieve that, our organization will grow stronger. 

Two years have passed since then, and “Light of Love” continues to mature as an organization. Along the way, our development has been aided by the strict requirements and helpful training of these partner nonprofits. We would like to thank Transparent Fish Fund for supporting “Light of Love”’s initial development and for steering us onto the path of financial transparency, allowing our organization to go further and grow larger. 

Original article written by Xianwei Dai, translated by  EV Intern Allison Zhang

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