Our Approach

OUR PHILOSOPHY & APPROACH

Established Companies vs. Ethnic Minorities, Which Group Needs More Help?

Before we devote ourselves to this venture, Norman was in the field of management consultancy while Aileen was in business conferencing. We stationed in Shanghai but made trips to the Southwest China often as one of us is born there. The Southwest China is a less developed region and has over 50 ethnic minorities rooted there. These people are friendly, warm hearted, honest and hard working. Unfortunately due to the lack of business skill, knowledge and resources, many of their home based business are in a very small scale and not competitive, putting themselves into a difficult financial situation. Both of our jobs at that time were to improve companies’ competitiveness. We then naturally had this question in mind: established companies vs. ethnic minorities, which group needs more help to improve their competitiveness?

Marginalized Producers Inevitably in the Underdog Position

For most people the answer is pretty obvious: sympathy tell us to help these ethnic people (or marginalized producers), but in the world of commerce, knowledge, resources and technology always go to places where good profit be generated. Marginalized producers are therefore, inevitably, always in the underdog position.

Our Approach: Coach, Partner and Growth with Marginalized Producers
Non-profit organizations around the world are putting effort to subsidize these people. We want to be part of the force too, but in a slightly different angle and approach. We believe, to coach them to become a successful business operator by running a business together with them, could be an effective and sustainable solution. Through coaching and partnership, good business skill, mindset and mentality can be propagated, and hopefully, be able to improve their chance of success in running a business. Profit is crucial for healthy growth and self sufficiency, and is a magnet to attract knowledge, resources and technology.

Small Team, Big Dream
We are a very small team right now but dare to make a big dream of seeing a world to become a fairer and better place. We are prepared to keep the idea of helping the marginalized producers alive, and are willing to dedicate ourselves to accomplish it, though it would be tough and take long time. We are idealistic about the fact that ‘profit making’ and ‘helping the poor’ are not mutually exclusive. Instead, we believe it is what the 21 century company should do.

We hope you agree with our idea. It is about reducing poverty, giving hope, providing opportunity, bringing joy, improving harmony, and after all, making a world a better place.

Written by Interact China Co-Founders, Aileen & Norman + Partners
July 2007

P.S. We need people with similar passion to join or to partner with us! Please contact us at interact@interactchina.com to offer your joining or support, or to make any suggestions that you may have in co-operating with us!

Hello Everyone – the Interact China Blog is now born!

Hello all, thank you very much for reading our very first post! Weblog has been around for couple of years and as it evolves it fascinates us a lot – people of similar interests can communicate, express thoughts and share ideas in a very open, direct and economical way. We love to make friends and enjoy sharing thoughts and ideas with different people. Also we think it is good to let you know what’s going on with Interact China, and more importantly, what you think of Interact China!

The drawback/constraint of Blog for us though is that we are very tight in time resources, and managing / writing blog take time. Also as English is not our native language, writing it in a well espressed/structured manner in a short time limit is quite a challenging task for us! Nevertheless we predict the enjoyment of communicating / sharing with you outweight the mentioned drawbacks/constraints. Also we will try to win your precious reading time through content using our “heart” to write, rather than English writing skills…. so here it is – our blog is now officially born !!!

The theme of this blog will mainly be related to China (plus occasion announcements from our Interact China team). As we want to make it more causal, i.e., personal experience / thoughts sharing rather than hard facts/professional advisory), we may touch on various topics on a non-periodic basis, such as culture, language, travel, investment, living, doing business, current social affair….. well, let’s see how it evolves. 

We think sincere friendship is one of the beautiful things that one should seek, ask for and tresure. Let’s see if this blog can facilitate us to built such a friendship with you! 

Aileen & Norman + Interact China Team