PAEAN Service TripEnterprise Team – Angel, Tiffany, Yale, Zoe, Jiajia
Post June-Trip Analysis
Activity
◦ visit with Mr. Chu
◦ Site visits at two targeted villages
◦ Workshops
Business
◦ chicken (wuji) much potential on exploring the niche markets
◦ tea leaves
◦ wild boars
Implication of June trip
Transferable agricultural expertise from
demonstration units to villagers in general
Recognize the importance of market influence
for production scheduling
Strengthen bonding among villagers to foster
sense of cooperation
Establish long term relationships with business
partners instead of contract agreement
Choose one product for focused target-for-help
for setting up a particular strategy from the
successful case
Proposed Model ( 3 year plan
model)
For the first year,
◦ To expand coop business, including internet sales
◦ To assist them to construct a transparent financial
statement
Expected outcome
◦ 1. Follow up co op running
◦ 2. Software skills transfer
◦ 3. Internet promotion and sales
◦ 4. Transparent accounting statement
Actual schedule
Time/Day Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7
Arrival
Departure
9:30
Excel Software
training Financial &
accounting
workshop
Jeopardy
10:30Discussion
of coop11:30
12:30Website
workshop
Leaflets
distribution
day
13:30Establishing
Website for chicken
co-op14:30
Farming
activity15:30
16:30
17:30Welcoming
dinner18:30
Day by Day Program Breakdown
Content:
◦ Possible functions of coop
◦ Role distribution of executive committee
◦ Difficulties of coop
Outcome
◦ coop was still not in a right track and so the
role distribution were still not clear
◦ lacked of clients buy chicken through them
◦ long transportation time: chickens would be
rotted
Day 1&2: Discussion of Co-op and
Design Website
Excel Workshop
◦ Teach them how to record sales and
customers information in Excel by giving
demonstration based on a simulated chicken
selling case
◦ Elaborate more on the functions and help
them dealing with the steps
Farming Activity
◦ Learn more about farmers’ daily work and life
in countryside
◦ Understand farming requires high proficiency
to ensure a good productivity in time
Day 3: Excel Workshop + Farming Activity
Day by Day Program Breakdown
Accounting and Finance Training
Workshop
◦ training workshop focusing on double-entry
accounting and the formats on how to construct
ledger accounts, balance sheets and sales records
◦ Surprisingly, some farmers only required simple mental
math to be answered correctly
Official Website
◦ gathered at Mr. Xu’s house to collect important
information regarding the Co-operation’s licence
registration, videos, and pictures of their products to
be posted on the website to build a stronger profile of
their company
◦ accounts along with the website will be updated by
Mrs. Xu
Day 4: Accounting and Finance Training
Workshop, Official Website
Day by Day Program Breakdown
recap and summarize all the training
workshops conducted over the past 3 days
in a fun and interactive way so that areas of
weaknesses
farmer “students” into groups of 3 since
they were sitting in two rows of three
people conveniently
Due to time constraints, the game was cut
short and the answered questions, mainly
in the Excel and Website Design sections
were quickly gone through
Day 5: Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? A
Revision Game
Day by Day Program Breakdown
Original plan: designed poster for
setting up chicken selling booth
banned due to budget and hygienic
considerations
conduct promotional campaigns to
get more locals knowing about our
project, as well as to promote the
chicken co-op for long term
goodwill and reputation
spilt into 4 sub-teams to distribute
leaflets around city areas of XiuShui
Day 6: Marketing and Promotion (Leaflet
Distribution)
Day by Day Program Breakdown
Impact Evaluation
Raise the coop popularity
Increasing sales:
◦ Keep increasing publication works, including
citizens, hotels and government officers
◦ Monitor the official website and internet sales
◦ Consolidate client networks
Day 1&2: Discussion of Co-op and Design
Website
Impact Evaluation
We gave them motivations to keep on further study in
IT skills as long as there are such learning opportunities.
They can refer to the notes we gave out for future
needs.
We also provided some useful links for them to self-
study Excel in the notes.
Day 3: Excel Workshop + Farming Activity
Impact Evaluation
Accounting & Finance Training Workshop
Rather than conducting a lecture-based learning
environment, a problem-based case study approach will be
more useful in helping them understand the materials. We
hope that the training workshops will be of a use for them
and make a small positive impact in their lives
Website launch
gathered lots of information from Mr. Xu’s wife, Mrs. Xu and
taught her the how to use the website and update the Weibo
account so that the information on the websites can be
updated after the service trip is completed
Day 4: Accounting & Finance Training Workshop,
Website Launch
Impact Evaluation
Game was not as interactive and fun as we had
originally planned it to be because not enough
enthusiasm and energy was shown by the farmer
participants
Provide more exercise questions for each training
workshop before the start of the game
Day 5- Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? A Revision
Game
Impact Evaluation
the elderly market could be explored if the
villagers place more emphasis on targeting the
elderly market, or the target group who would
place significant value on health food choices
potential business partner opportunity on
developing the chicken soup business
Day 6: Marketing and Promotion (Leaflet
Distribution)
Long Term Growth
Provide training and promotional activity
customer relationship management
experience of leaflet distribution and hope that
this will set a good example for them to follow
in the future
set up website as well as other social media
accounts for promoting Wangyuwuji online
considering the increasing rate of computer
usage
Sales channel
Long Term Growth
in line with our goal of sustainable development as we
hope the local farmers to leverage on benefits of co-op
and put resources together and increase their
bargaining power
hope to keep in touch with them about further
development of co-op and Mr. Ding to keep him abreast
of the latest news.
Co-op
Long Term Growth
focus on the small group of core people in
cooperation and teach them the relevant skills
teach them more operational skills that can
match their daily business, instead of focusing
on skills that are beneficial for the development
of co-op in long term
Transferrable/operational skills
ReflectionThrough this trip I learn the true meaning of “giving is better
than receiving” because I personally played a part in
contributing to alleviating poverty and exclusion in rural China.
I appreciate this mutually-benefiting relationship we built
between the enterprise team members and the farmers we
helped because knowledge experience exchange occurred when
we trained them the enterprise knowledge of financial skills and
they taught us how to harvest wheat grains in return. It was a fun
and memorable process and I look forward to seeing
improvements in Co-op through our efforts in online promotion
and distributing leaflets that I designed. –Tiffany Ng
At the very beginning of the trip, I thought I was there to give
and help as a volunteer concerning about the poor in rural China,
however in the end I found that I learned from local farmers as
much as, if not more than, what I taught them. Although we are
enterprise team, education for farmers is also a necessary
component to sustain local enterprises. It seems to be most
feasible for university students to do, but actually requires a lot
of patience, empathy and good communication skills. Hope the
future teams can take that challenge and enjoy the service!
- Jiajia Zhang
Xiushui, as its name suggests, the town was surrounded by beautiful rivers
and hilly mountain. Little did we know about this area before we took a
2-hour bus from Nanchang to Xiushui. Resources allocation had never been
perfect in this robust world and we, fully understand this after talking to the
local farmers. No matter how hard they work, their income is still at the
poverty line and can barely sustain their life. However, income does not
necessarily positively related to happiness. As seen from their smile on face
and how they are grateful for us to listen to their situation, we can feel their
joy from heart. I hope the next team can understand the farmers from heart
and the real difficulty they faced – sales channel and capital, instead of
stepping through the failure our team have experienced. – Zoe Chung
This service project was certainly memorable to me. From preparation to
actual service activities, our team has worked together well to help XiuShui
villagers getting out of poverty cycle from the enterprise perspective.
Though there were some frustrations along the whole project, our team made
it to the October service trip and to help them as much as we could from the
sustainability perspective. We knew that there might not be immediate
impact after our services conducted, but we believed that every little effort
counts. And we hope that the future PAEAN’ers could continue to contribute
to this project and someday the villagers could enjoy the living standard and
life quality every human deserve. – Angel Ip
Reflection
As an enterprise team member, there are three most important things I have
learnt. First, it is self-motivation. Despite as a business major student, I knew
nothing about the way to run a company, like the agreement, the role
distributions in executive committee and so on. But the most important thing
is how to present these theories to the audience. All these things would not be
taught in text books or lectures, but relied on our preparation. We had to
expect all accidents and prepare second plan, design a suitable format to
present our ideas. This process would not be motivated by others but us.
The second thing is to appreciate. To appreciate what we own, what we
experienced and the chances we can grab. Throughout June and October trip,
we noticed that there are so many intelligent people in mainland china, some
of them are still secondary students and some of them are farmers. They are facing different difficult situation,
such as tremendous pressure of public examination, suffering poverty. We realized that the peaceful life we
have is not a must, somebody wants them very much. Why don’t we appreciate the life we are having and feel
joyful towards it?
Last but not least, the key idea of service trip I got is inspiration. Such a short period, only 5 days, there are
only little things we can do. If we can inspire them to do something they have not imagined, they can copy it
apart from the short five days. Therefore, if there are any chances of other service trip in the future, we would
be better to focus on inspiration.
Finally I would like to thank my teammates and other teams. It is really a memorable period to stay, to work,
to serve with them. I have learnt a lot from the discussion time. I hope that we can last our friendship forever
- Yale Wong.
Reflection
Thank you for your support!