Two years ago, the death of Floyd, a black American, by a white police officer, sparked a worldwide outcry over racial discrimination and police brutality. A year ago, the case ended with Chauvin, a white police officer, being sentenced to 22 years and six months in prison. However, the issue of racial discrimination has never been fundamentally addressed, and bullying of Chinese, Asian or people of color continues to occur from time to time around the world.
It is precisely with the intention of promoting ethnic minority equality and reducing injustice to vulnerable groups, a non-profit organization called East Coast Coalition for Tolerance and Non-Discrimination (hereinafter referred to as: ECC) was established in New York in 2019, under the leadership of founder Bingcheng Mao. The organization has grown into one of the largest non-profit organizations led by Chinese youths in the United States.
With the core of mobilizing young people to participate in public service, Mao Bincheng has continuously developed and accumulated volunteer teams from the first three universities. So far, more than 3,000 young volunteers from 17 schools across the United States have joined the ECC team, jointly initiated and completed more than 20,000 volunteers to participate in public service, and carried out 7 large-scale charity projects. Mao Bincheng has also represented ECC in interviews with former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, former President of the World Bank, Zoellick Zoellick of the World Bank, and former first daughter of the United States, Chelsea Clinton, etc., and the interviews have been viewed more than 5 million times in North America.
Mao Bincheng gave a lecture at the Beijing Center of Yale University
During the dialogue, every answer of Mao Bincheng firmly confirmed his love for public welfare and had a clear direction. Two years later, he will officially enter Harvard Law School, focusing on human rights law, which he sees as a powerful complement to public service. "In the next two years, I hope to continue to build ECC non-profit organizations, so that these projects can help more people, protect more ethnic minorities, and promote discussions on many issues." At the same time, he added, "the protection of more vulnerable groups and minorities through human rights law should be the central role of the law." ”
Don't be small
Initially choosing to embark on the path of public welfare, Mao Bincheng was largely influenced by his mother, who was a frontline doctor. In 2002, when SARS broke out in China, his mother volunteered to join the frontline treatment team. One day in middle school, while cleaning, he pulled out a handwritten letter that was already slightly yellowed from the closet, and after reading it carefully, Mao Bincheng was already in tears. This is a "suicide note" left by his mother before volunteering to go to the medical frontline. The last sentence of the letter, "Do not do evil for the small, do not do the good for the small" made him deeply remember.
So when Mao Bincheng saw a number of bullying incidents against ethnic minorities in New York in 2019, he resolutely stood up and decided to put his young passion into the cause of helping others like his mother.
In the process of initially building the ECC organization, he was fortunate to encounter an action grant initiated by former US President Clinton and his humanitarian foundation, with the "Equal Medical Security for Ethnic Minorities" project as the core, Mao Bincheng submitted an application, after 7 rounds of interviews, ECC finally stood out from more than 11,000 candidate organizations around the world and became one of the 38 selected public welfare projects. It is with the help of this fund that Mao Bincheng has further expanded the boundaries of ECC, continuously extended the areas and groups covered by the project, and attracted more and more young people to join, encouraging them to participate in public services, consider social affairs, and increase their sense of social responsibility.
Mao Bincheng and U.S. Vice President Harris
Although there are many difficulties on the road of entrepreneurship, public welfare is not an easy road, and there will be some unsupportive or negative voices, but Mao Bincheng always remembers the sentence his mother wrote to him, "do it for good", as long as this thing is right, he is willing to stick to it, constantly adjust his mentality, and stick to the road of public welfare. My mother has always been the driving force behind his persistence, "She would give me a lot of constructive advice, and sometimes she would criticize me, such as feeling that a project was too rushed or too slow." In terms of the overall plan, my mother is my greatest spiritual support and help. ”
Promote more people to devote themselves to public welfare services
In 2020, when the new crown epidemic broke out, ECC launched the charity project "Ethnic Fair Medical Insurance Program" in New York, which is also one of ECC's core projects. New York is a very diverse city, but these people from all over the world have difficulty obtaining equal health care because of the language barrier.
After observing this phenomenon, Mao Bincheng mobilized the volunteers in the organization to form a project team, selected 2-3 hospitals in each of the five major cities in the United States, translated all the relevant information of the hospital from English into 7 languages including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, Arabic, etc., and established a free hotline to provide 24-hour translation services related to medical treatment. In the end, the program secured the right to timely treatment for more than 85,000 minority people with language barriers.
At his busiest time, Mao Bincheng recalled that he slept an average of 1-2 hours a day, 7 days a week, just to build a project-related website, set up a hotline, and manage the team well, so that everyone could cooperate better.
In May 2020, Mao Bincheng was invited by the Asian Society of America to be a guest of the "Fight against Coronavirus Racism" forum, sharing the stage with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, the former Administrator of the United Nations World Food Programme, former US Deputy Secretary of State Joseset Sheeran, and US Congressman Liu Yunping. In June 2020, Mao Bincheng, together with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and the American Asia Society, donated 16,000 medical masks and other materials to nonprofit organizations such as the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in Los Angeles.
In February 2021, by chance, Mao Bincheng got the opportunity to visit Chelsea Clinton, vice chairman of the Clinton Foundation and Clinton's daughter, and he decided to protect vulnerable groups and promote medical security under the epidemic as the core of this interview. Interestingly, the interview took place on Chinese New Year, and the team was watching the Spring Festival gala next to him while he was talking to Chelsea Clinton about how to deal with hate crimes against Asians. This interview has now received more than one million views on ECC's website, laying a good foundation for Mao Bincheng's follow-up series of related interview video content.
It was also from this year that Mao Bincheng was hired by the World Economic Forum in Davos as a contributor to the issue, and wrote a column and commentary article, focusing on human rights, labor rights and other issues, hoping that these articles will be read by more people and let everyone start to seriously think about public service, society, inclusion, human rights and other related issues.
Public welfare is a lifelong cause
In 2021, the death of Floyd, a black American, who was kneeled by a white police officer, also triggered a local discussion in New York State about a law called 50-a, which was once called the strongest secret police law in the United States by the Washington Post, and many public welfare organizations at that time tried to overturn this law, but failed because they did not fully mobilize young people. Mao Bincheng felt that this was a good opportunity, so he set up a project to mobilize students in New York State to counsel the upper and lower houses through live broadcasts, handwritten letters, emails and other forms, and eventually pushed for the repeal of the law. "It's only us that mobilizes young people to do it on a large scale." When sharing the core advantages of ECC with us, Mao Bincheng emphasized many times, "We pay attention to the importance that young people attach to public service, because only when people participate in public service, the so-called everyone for me, I for everyone, can we have the opportunity to make everyone's life better." ”
Mao Bincheng interviewed Condoleezza Rice, the 66th Secretary of State of the United States
In March 2022, Mao Bincheng launched a public welfare action to assist Ukrainian children and refugees with disabilities in New York, USA, calling for compassion to "transcend skin color". The campaign has received more than 1,000 replies from Ukrainian refugees living in Romania and Poland. In the same month, he donated a total of $1.09 million to UNICEF and the World Food Programme.
In August 2022, Mao received an acceptance letter from Harvard Law School's J.D., deferring his enrollment for two years, and within these two years, he hopes to make the transition as good as possible. By transition, he hopes to pass on his position as founder or board chairman to the next generation, and the organization will continue to operate when he goes to law school. In the future, after graduation, he hopes to turn to the legal field and become a human rights lawyer to help society on another level. But at the same time, he stressed that "public welfare is a lifelong cause." In my spare time outside the scope of work, I can still do public welfare, no matter which non-profit organization I am for, to make some contributions. ”
When it comes to making some suggestions for people who hope to engage in public welfare in the future, Mao Bincheng said two experiences. The first is to clarify why you want to do public welfare, "putting public service above personal interests is a prerequisite for truly doing a good job in public welfare, rather than considering your own position, personal interests and other circumstances." Second, before opening a non-profit organization, it is necessary to see if there is a similar organization in the society, and if there is something similar, you should try to join, especially a formed organization, not everyone has to become a founder to build a new organization.
At the end of the interview, the 1.95-meter-tall Mao mentioned that he was carrying a journalist's body armor and had planned to enter Ukraine overland this month to shoot a documentary about children and people with disabilities. The seed of social undertaking buried in his heart when he was a child has taken root in Mao Bincheng's heart, and has constantly spread branches and leaves in all directions.
(Note: This article is written by Forbes China · Written by the organizing committee of the Global Chinese Elite Top 100 Selection. ）