Statement of Purpose for the Reynolds Foundation Fellowship

                                        Applicant: XXX
                                        Program: Harvard Kennedy School of Government

Instruction: Please articulate the basis for your interest in the Reynolds Foundation Fellowship, describe the background experiences that have helped further this interest, and propose specific ways you would expect to translate your learning experience into concrete impact on societies you wish to serve (approximately 1,000 words).

In September 20XX, my wife left China for Edinburgh University in the UK to undertake her Master’s program in public health, leaving our 5-year-old daughter at home. If my MPA program with the Kennedy School of Government is made possible with the Reynolds Foundation Fellowship, I will also have to bid farewell to my beloved daughter. Why this sacrifice of family life? I often interrogate myself.

Just as my wife needs to receive advanced specialized trainings in order to meet major challenges in public health sector posed by SARS and bird flues that have cropped consecutively in China and the rest of the world, so do I in my effort to develop social entrepreneurship to translate my training into concrete impact on the society I wish to serve.

As a financial professional with nearly 14 years of working experiences in and vast knowledge of China’s financial market, I believe that through the MPA program I will be equipped to assume national leadership position as a social entrepreneur. I grow interested in the Reynolds Foundation Fellowship precisely because of the entrepreneurship spirit that it designs to cultivate in the Harvard fellows—the readiness to contrive innovative solutions to our most urgent social problems. I particularly appreciate the idea of applying business skills in the social sector and the combination of private initiative with public purpose, with social entrepreneurs as real world practitioners, who are committed to effective, sustainable, and practical solutions that can be replicated in a variety of contexts around the world. As the largest developing country in the world, China is in particular need of such social entrepreneurship programs to address a multitude of unique social problems.

One of the major social problems China has been facing is the alarming rich-poor polarization and the ensuing deprivation of educational opportunities of the school children in remote and often impoverished rural areas. In response to the problem, an action plan “PROJECT HOPE” has been launched to raise money to bring the school-quitting kids back to the classroom. Over my past career, I have developed my own social service initiatives, one of which is proposing and persuading Standard Life (UK), in my capacity as a senior member of the management team of this multinational company, to contribute 1 million RMB (equivalent to 130,000 USD) as donation to China Youth Development Foundation (www.xxx.org.cn or www.xxx.net), via the poverty-relief office of China Foreign Affairs Ministry, as part of the decade-long nationwide campaign, which resulted in the reconstruction of three “PROJECT HOPE” primary schools in the remote border areas in the southernmost Yunnan Province, which could house nearly 1,000 underprivileged rural students. I supervised the entire process of donation, adoption and the implementation of the initiative. To make the initiative a sustainable one, I created a regular employee donation mechanism under which money is raised to purchase books, stationery and facilities to improve the overall educational conditions of the schools as a whole. In return, the teachers and the students in those schools have been writing and sending pictures to us regularly every year to report on every bit of the progress being made.

This experience demonstrates how a creative initiative can make a difference. It has also given me a unique inspiration. There are virtually millions of students, not only in primary schools but also in middle schools and colleges, who are in sore need of financial aid in order to enjoy the equal opportunity of education. The donations made by individuals and corporate organizations are individual and random, impossible to be turned into a long-term and sustainable undertaking. A way out of this dilemma is to create a foundation, a unique social entrepreneurship program with long-term and institutional guarantee of sustainability.

As a financial professional, I believe it is entirely feasible to create a fund management institution which raises a substantial amount of capital through diverse channels and, by applying modern asset management concepts and methodologies, puts the fund into effective investment to ensure the inflation proof and the appreciation of the fund. The institution allocates the annual profit generated by the fund investment to assist the students in need.

In terms of the pattern of management, we can entrust all the collected capital to the unified and comprehensive management of a commercial bank with established reputation to guarantee the safety of the fund. Without the board of directors reaching any resolution, no one is allowed to draw on the capital. In addition, all the investment details will be disclosed publicly in the newspapers. The investments are to be made autonomously by professional investors or through entrustment. To supervise the investments, the institution can employ reputed public accountants and lawyers to undertake auditing, consulting and control. Finally, publicity campaigns can be launched to recognize all the corporate or private sponsors that contribute to the fund and this incentive mechanism can create a win-win result.

A financial specialist with decade-long professional experience, I believe a creative and effective use of the fund can become a realistic solution to the education problem of the students in economically depressed areas, not only in China but also in other developing countries, and even in the rest of the world. I do have the financial knowledge and the skills but how to apply them to non-profit purposes, I need to be equipped with the framework, the tools and even the legal knowledge that will help me become more effective in my socially entrepreneurial pursuits. In addition, I hope to be introduced to the concepts, practices, and challenges of social entrepreneurship in the United States and around the world so that I can draw useful experiences from my classmates and teachers with whom I will interact.

Personal initiative and aggressiveness will be the qualities that I will endeavor to expand through your Reynolds Foundation Scholarship in social entrepreneurship. It is exciting for me to become a social entrepreneur because I believe I can make a difference as an individual, as a responsible and productive member of our society of which I am a part. To this extent, the Reynolds Foundation Fellowship will help bring out my fullest potential as one of the emerging generation of leaders committed to the social problems and the welfare of the general public.