Happy Friday! Since many of u noted that China is "different now" ie not as impoverished, I'd like to share my experiences on that front, bc while that's true, the inequality is still immense. So, some perspectives: https://twitter.com/ruima/status/1298410636280393728

As soon as I got to China in 2007 I started sponsoring poor kids in rural areas. That's kinda bc of my personal exp growing up (altho I was actually privileged), & bc such initiatives are everywhere you look. Really super poor kids in the mtns. Migrant worker kids in cities.

You generally wire some money & maybe become a penpal. But your info is really limited. So in 2011 a frd & I went to rural Shaanxi to visit a sch we wanted to sponsor more deeply. I'd make annual trips there for 5 yrs, grp of us paid for room & board of 100 kids. Learnings:

We worked the very poor, so:
1. Most had parents who were absent (working in the cities) or sick / disabled / mentally ill (they were my age! late 30s). Overwork, poor healthcare, job injuries. So many bedridden. Grandparents often illiterate & also sick. Rarely met healthy fams.

2. Schools were nicely equipped, teachers were v hardworking (but occasionally corrupt), and prices reasonable (HS is not compulsory in China), but was still steep for fams who were poor (a lot bc of aforementioned illnesses). But kids were emotionally starved.

That's kind of my prob w ppl who just look at the hardware (yes they have computers in the sch) but have you actually interacted w these kids? They have such low self-confidence, a lot of pressure, & get such BAD advice bc no one ard them really knows how "the world" works.

Very few ppl were gentle w them & cared abt their feelings (teachers / fam too busy / stressed). They had no idea what to do (what to study? jobs? what's finance? what's tech? no one ard them has done these jobs, maybe relative is bank teller & that's the extent of their world).

So I decided to bring my frds w me, Ivy League / Tsinghua Beida grads, & we all played games & just tried to be their big sis/bro for a wknd a yr. It was to show them that ppl from "the upper class" (fairytale to them) cared enuff to show up, & that they could ask us anything.

I'd like to think we did a little to help them (well I know we did bc we helped w job srch after they went to univ and one is even a VC now!). But whole exp also showed me how VERY hard it is to imagine let alone impact someone else's life a lot w/out rly spending time.

I went into it thinking they need $ (which they do, it's always helpful) but what they needed most was actually love & guidance, to gain a very basic level of confidence & hope, things I completely took for granted. If u look ard, I bet you'd find these kids where u live, too.