Adream | Chairman Yidan Chen Visited an Adream Center

On October 19^th, Mr. Yidan Chen, Founder and Honorary Chairman of Tencent Charitable Foundation visited the Gaogeng School for Nine-year Compulsory Education at Qiong Lai City, Sichuan Province. In the brand new Adream Center, he sat with 19 Adream teachers and listened to their feelings, concerns and expectations when teaching the Adream curriculum to students.

#From right to left: Desheng Li, Director of Qiong Lai Education Bureau; Ming Lei, Director of Qiong Lai CPC Organizational Department; Yidan Chen, Founder and Honorary Chairman of Tencent Charitable Foundation; Jiangxue Pan, Founder and Chairwoman of Shanghai Adream Foundation; Liming Xiao, Vice President for PR, Tencent Group

Yidan Chen remarked: “I was deeply moved by what I saw at the Adream Center today. Adream Foundation has done things others are not willing to do, simply because they’re too tiring and difficult. Yet, Adream Foundation has fully exercised its strengths here. The funds from Adream Foundation didn’t reach children directly. Instead, the funds reached schools, so the work at the school level is much more solid, precisely-targeted and yielded much better outcome.”

Accompanying Yidan Chen’s visit are Jiangxue Pan, Founder and Chairwoman of Shanghai Adream Foundation; Desheng Li, Director of Qiong Lai Education Bureau; Zhengkun Qiu, Pedagogist of Da Yi Education Bureau; Xudong Li, Headmaster of Gaogeng School for Nine-year Compulsory Education of Qiong Lai City; Jing He, Vice Headmaster of Yin Du Primary School of Da Yi County.

In1998, Yidan Chen founded Tencent with Huateng Ma, Zhidong Zhang, Chenye Xu and Liqing Zeng. In 2013, Yidan Chen announced his decision to step down as chief administrative officer of Tencent and instead, to lead the company to create multiple innovative philanthropic projects. He became the first Internet entrepreneur to win the “China Charity Prize” and was awarded as one of China’s top 10 philanthropists.

#Yidan Chen, Founder and Honorary Chairman of Tencent Charitable Foundation

Yidan Chen, after the afternoon’s visit, was deeply touched by Adream’s rapid development in the past decade. When Tencent first worked with Adream in 2007, Tencent donated 12 second-hand computers. Then for 11 years that followed, Tencent Charitable Foundation and “Le Juan” platform of Tencent Charity have contributed more than 122 million RMB of donation funds to Adream. Tencent has become Adream’s closest partner thanks to its highest accumulative donations to and longest cooperation with Adream among all Adream’s major donors.

According to Yidan Chen, the ability to allocate resources and support continuous operation is critical to development of an organization, as the developing society needs more investment in education resources. For the past 11 years of our operation, Adream has built more than 3600 Adream Centers in 31 provinces across the nation. Chen was deeply impressed by Adream’s “speed of growth”, rapidly enhancing operational abilities and its strong ability to learn.

#Jiangxue Pan and Yidan Chen listened to Adream teachers talking at Qiong Lai City

Yidan Chen emphasized that the big differences between philanthropy and commerce is that the latter focuses on competition, grapping resources and eliminating competitors; yet the former depends on unity and cooperation. Tencent believes that the realization of a philanthropic vision depends on effective implementation of cooperation projects on the ground one by one.

Yidan Chen remarked: “It’s only natural for charitable organizations to cooperate with each other more and deeper. Adream is an outstanding example in many aspects. The Tencent platform should take stock of Adream’s experiences and case studies, and share them with other foundations.”

Yidan Chen invited Chairwomen Jiangxue Pan to attend the award ceremony of “Yidan Prize” to be held this December.

#Yidan Chen talks about Adream Foundation

How do Adream Centers operate?

Gaogeng School for Nine-year Compulsory Education has a history of more than a hundred years, originated from the Ming Yuan College in the end of the Qing dynasty. This July, Adream built a brand new Adream classroom at Gaogeng and teachers of the school began to learn the Adream curriculum for the first time.Xudong Li, Headmaster of Gaogeng School for Nine-year Compulsory Education shared with the delegates his “story with Adream”. Although Li is building a brand new Adream Center at Gaogeng this time, he is indeed a “veteran Adream worker”. As early as in 2013, Headmaster Li participated in the construction of the Adream Center at Baihe School for Nine-year Compulsory Education of Qiong Lai City. As there weren’t enough people to build the Center, he even asked his son who were still attending high school at the time to decorate the Adream Center with him with their own hands.In 2017, Headmaster Li moved from Baihe to Gaogeng. Since then, he has been embracing the philosophy of “Do the Education Suitable for the Future Growth of Students” to operate his school. His key words for education are “student-oriented” and “caring for students”.

#Chairwoman Jiangxue Pan took a photo with Qiuxia Zhu of Adream Teachers’ College (women on the left); Desheng Li, Director of Qiong Lai Education Bureau (man on the left); Wanbo Zhang, Vice Director of Education Bureau (taller man on the right); and Headmaster Xudong Li (man on the far right).

Adream promoted the “partnership” between Qiong Lai City with the neighboring Da Yi County in order to help teachers master the Adream curriculum as quickly as possible. The two Adream Centers worked together to map out a suitable Adream operational model for Qiong Lai City. Da Yi has implemented its first Adream Center as early as in 2011. Up until now, Da Yi has 29 Adream Centers, three Adream salons, 2,036 Adream teachers and 30,232 students benefited from those Adream Centers.Jiangxue Pan stated: “Da Yi County enjoyed an early start in exploring the Adream curriculum and is ahead of the others.”During the visit, Zhengkun Qiu, Pedagogist of Da Yi Education Bureau summarized the journey of Da Yi teachers embracing the Adream Centers from scratch for the past eight years, including efforts of attending teachers’ training, salons, conducting mentor programs and organizing Adream study tours. Qiu said: “Da Yi County has decided to cover the entire county’s schools for compulsory education with Adream Centers by the end of this year.”

#A group photo taken by attendees, Adream workers and Adream staff working at Da Yi and Qiong Lai

On October 20^th, 2019, the second nationwide “WeCounty Conference” was held at Tao Ba Village, Da Tong Town, Qiong Lai City, jointly held by the CPC party committee of Qiong Lai City, Sichuan Province and Tecent Charitable Foundation. Yidan Chen pointed out the importance of unleashing organic growth power of villages to realize rural rejuvenation. The Tencent WeCounty Conference helps connect friendship with information and funds, thus playing an effective role in driving the progress of China’s grassroots governance and rural rejuvenation.

Click this title to read the full article of “Yidan Chen: Staying True to WeCounty Initiative for a Decade”.

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