264: Sam Waldo (Ashley Talks ASH14)

Podcast highlights:

• 00:51 What is your story? Why China? -- I studied Chinese at university, it seemed a very challenging thing to do. I came to China on a study-abroad and it was obvious China was the place to be. In 2010, I joined a non-profit called Teach for China (link to Chinese language website). What better way to plan for a long-term career in China than to start from the ground up?
• 25:15 How would you define modern Chinese consumers? -- Young Chinese consumers are slowly moving in a more socially-conscious direction. Things you already see are environmental awareness, health, and a desire for a cleaner, more simplistic lifestyle. This is completely brand new in China. One thing you see is companies who try to copy this model don't do too well because they lack the authenticity. This is really important if you are going to succeed in this space.
• 39:30 What has been your experience as a foreigner doing business in China? -- As a foreigner you have a ceiling. There are places you can't go and things you can't do. At the end of the day I'm not Chinese and I'm never going to be Chinese. This will always limit what you can achieve. But there are things you can tap into as a foreigner. Interestingly Chinese people have told us they trust our motives more because we are foreigners. There remains a strong suspicion that Chinese people doing charity work are trying to get rich and famous.

Podcast notes:

• 00:05 ASH13 - Ashley Talks with Ashley Galina Dudarenok and Sam Waldo, co-founder of Mantra.
• 00:51 What is your story? Why China? -- I studied Chinese at university, it seemed a very challenging thing to do. I came to China on a study-abroad and it was obvious China was the place to be. In 2010, I joined a non-profit called Teach for China (link to Chinese language website). What better way to plan for a long-term career in China than to start from the ground up?
• 04:18 Teach for China was a eye-opening experience for so many of us because as high-achieving Americans, we assumed we were going to just go to these places in rural China and make an immediate impact. The reality, however, was different. The systemic problems facing our students were much larger than any of us could solve in two years.
• 06:13 We found we could more directly help these students when we discovered so many of them had serious vision issues. You could see how vision-impairment was keeping these students back. So we got the idea to do a small glasses project. We self-funded a small project to get glasses and eye exams to around 500 students in Yunnan province where we were teaching. We consistently found 90+% of students who needed glasses didn't have them. From these early efforts we grew into the non-profit Education in Sight, which we've run since 2012.
• 09:15 We are proud of the work we've done, but to give a sense of scale, researchers who have looked at the problem estimate 30 million students in rural China lack access to needed vision care. This is equal to the entire population of Canada!
• 10:05 After you've given kids glasses, were you able to see results? -- First, research has shown that when done correctly, vision care intervention is equivalent to an additional year of schooling. So this is potentially a very impactful project. That said, when we got started we didn't really know what we were doing and how to, for example, ensure students consistently wore their glasses.
• 13:30 We found in many rural areas lots of misunderstanding about wearing glasses. Some adults still think that if you wear glasses, you will become reliant on them and that it's better to not wear them so your vision will improve.