Joy EWS

Reflection: Presenting my project last week marked the end of this year's Signature project and I am very proud of what I have accomplished. I was able to finish a database, analyze, research on psychological reasons, and interview 2 companies that engaged in CSR (corporate social responsibility) in Hong Kong. Most of all, I love presenting to the public and sharing to them my work. It was very insightful for me to see what questions the audience have. Some of the challenges I encountered this year were planning out my project and data collecting. Initially, I wanted to focus on US companies. However, US companies' data are very difficult to find as they are not required to publicize these information. Hence, I had to switch back to Hong Kong companies and add different components to it, mainly qualitative analysis, such as the psychology piece and interviews. Another challenge was data collecting. It was very time consuming as I had to search each company one by one indivi...

Microsoft HK Interview: How to encourage philanthropy: 1) Corporate: CSR: Sustainability report , pressure 2) Company: CSV, indirect help, connection 3) NGO: CSV, awareness 4) Government: ecosystem, CSR affect economy 5) Public: Aware, volunteer, heart to serve Microsoft Youth Spark: 400 underserved -computer training, technology -Hong Kong is very behind in tech -help autism children, special awareness -win-win Suicide Projects -track social media activity -prevent, analyze, show posts that are positive, decrease anxiety -collect data, find trends -win-win Breadth Impact: Cloud Donation -help NGO -donate Cloud -ngo: China facial recognition, finding lost people -app, reduce time and money, expand, do great things -win-win

As mentioned in my last couple of blog posts, I have been working on scheduling two interviews with two companies - Microsoft Hong Kong and CK Hutchison. I was able to talk to them over spring break in Hong Kong and below are my summary of our talks! CK Hutchison  -a huge company - 57 countries, 6 businesses, 300000 employees -Why do they engage in social responsibility activities? -They are a listed company and all listed companies have stakeholders and shareholders. They have to please the stakeholders and ensure a growing company that is stable and has no risks. -It is a win win situation: you help the business and you feel good How do you help the business? -Usually the activity is part of the business, what they are already doing example) HK Grocery Waste Park n Shop is a huge chain supermarket in Hong Kong, and CK Hutchison has been working with them for a long time, especially about dealing with waste. They created this project where their food waste would go to fo...

As the presentation day is coming up, I have been trying to wrap up my project. My project is separated into two parts - qualitative and quantitative analysis. For the first semester, I mainly focused on quantitative which is creating a data set that includes top Hong Kong listed companies' donation amount by year, industry, and percent of profit. I then analyzed these data and made some conclusions. I also met up with a professional in the statistic field to help me with the excel analyzation. For qualitative analysis, I conducted two interviews with 2 companies in Hong Kong that are key donors and leading philanthropists. They each have engaged in many business projects that bring value to the community yet they are also business strategies for the company. It is a win-win situation. I talked with them to get an insight of their projects and ideas to encourage other companies to do the same. I also added a psychology piece that explains different theories behind altruism. It wa...

I am writing up the questions to ask when interviewing. Below is the list of questions that I came up with. I can't wait to hear their answers! Tell me a little bit of the ongoing or past projects that have been successful or made an impact in the community What is the company’s goal or intention when engaging in these projects Do you think it is the company’s image, public image of the company that drives these projects more or is it the heart to serve Do you think these influential projects have made a difference in the workplace in terms of cohesion among staff, higher satisfaction with the company, a community within the organization How do you think you can encourage other leaders to do the same, to Foster change What is hindering them from donating How can you balance ,shift this profit maximization culture to be more committed to helping the community How do you decide what sector to help What are some challenges you face How do you find these partners, do you ...

After reaching out to a few business leaders, I successfully set up 2 interviews for spring break when I am in Hong Kong. One is with Microsoft Hong Kong, and the other one is with CK Hutchison. Both of them demonstrated excellence in corporate philanthropy. I did some brief research on their projects: Microsoft: Microsoft will be donating over US$1 billion in cloud services to 70,000 NGOs around the world in the next three years. Additionally, Microsoft Hong Kong will provide more comprehensive services to local NGOs. There are also many other programs such as YouthSpark and GirlSpark. CK Hutchison: From Heart of Gold Hong Kong Hospice Service Programme that raised  HK$126 million, to donating audio books to people with disabilities, to investing in many universities and technology developments, just to name a few. I am very thankful for these opportunities to find out more, particularly interested in knowing what motivates the company’s decision to donate and how success...

I am pretty much done with the quantitative analysis. I am heading towards qualitative analysis which includes 2 parts: a psychology piece and  an interview with a business leader to find out why people donate and how to encourage this behavior in the community. I am in the process of writing up the psychology piece which will be published in the social enterprise website later on. This piece includes different factors that contribute to altruism, such as the social exchange theory. I also met with Ms Bendall to discuss this topic more in depth. For the interview piece, I am in the midst of contacting potential business leaders. I am reaching out through my parents' connections. My goal is to find at least one person to interview over spring break in Hong Kong. Below is a letter that I wrote and sent to a manager in Microsoft Hong Kong in hopes to get an interview: Dear: Hope this email finds you well. My name is Joycelyn Yip, and I am a Grade 12 high school student who is ...

I met with Ms Bendall last week to see if she has any insight in the psychological perspective to my project. She mentioned that the public Image of the company is a crucial factor. Leaders want to build a community within the organization, a philanthropic image, and cohesion within the organization. In addition, when workers feel better, they will work better and enhance work performance. In terms of persuasion, we can think about social cohesion. If we keep the society stable, there will be care for the support system that support businesses. It is mutually beneficial. I have more psychology research from reading outside articles and notes from AP Psychology class last year(in previous blog post) and I will consolidate and publicize all of the information onto the social enterprise website. I am also finding different current news on corporate philanthropy and how it has impacted the society positively, and publishing them onto the website as well.

I started to consolidate my data to focus on the top 50 companies in Hong Kong. I am almost done with collecting the data. I mainly analyzed the data based on the size of the company, how much profit they make, their industry, and their donating trend over the last several years. After the collection and analyzation processes are done, I will publish it to my social enterprise's website platform. I am also currently looking at articles that display the effect of big companies' donation, such as FaceBook and HSBC bank. For example, Mark Z donated billions of dollars to cancer research and sparked new methods to cure diseases. HSBC donated millions of dollars to water programs to help the underprivileged. I believe that sharing the success and joy of people's donation will impact others' to donate. It is a ripple effect. These articles will also be published on the website along with the data base. My next step is to meet with Ms Bendall to look more into the psycholo...

For the interview assignment, I decided to interview my father who is one of the founders of the social enterprise  Sodata Analytics Foundation Association, where I am interning at. He is also a businessman and philanthropist. 1) How did you come up with this idea of starting Sodata? While I was studying at Chicago Booth Business School AXP EMBA, I was able to connect with other graduates, and we all had a conviction to make an impact in the society. We started this non profit social venture for impacting on social enterprises through making a positive market influence on the corporate philanthropy culture by way of our data analytics and promotions, and through our efforts in crowdfunding platform for social enterprises in need.    As far as philanthropy is concerned, either individually or corporately, it tends to be hindered by the deep rooted Asian culture. When the news of people like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg announced their donation of their entire wealth, ...

I continue to analyze the data that I collected over the past several months. I started categorizing the companies by industry and looked at if there are any donating behavior trend based on the type of industry. Surprisingly, there is a correlation. I ranked the top 10 industry that donated the most in 2015 and 2016. Even though the particular order varied from 2015 to 2016, the general rank is: banks, real estate, oil, gold, insurance, software, gas, vehicle, and hotel/leisure. I also started looking at how psychological factors play a role in business leaders' decision to donate to further encourage corporate philanthropy.  Social exchange theory , or “cost-benefit analysis” :  we help others if we weigh the costs and benefits and the benefits outweigh the costs  (in this case, the benefits could be companies' image, impression, appeal to its audience, a way to attract more profit)  Businesses get more out of it than the money they donate. After all, the...

Through collecting data and doing some initial analyzing, I found that there is an upward trend for donating activity. The percent of all the publicly listed companies in the main board of the hk stock exchange that donate increased around 8% from 2013 to 2016. Furthermore, 44.13% to 52.12% of the listed companies donate. In which around 16%-21% donate 0-500,000 HKD = 64090 USD. 5%-7% donate around 64090 to 128181 USD. 12% to 14% donate 128181 to 640906 USD. 10%-12% donate 640906 USD+. It is very interesting to put the donation amount into percent and look at it as a whole. I will continue to do more analyzation and collection of data. I am also meeting with Ms Price to look at the statistics more in depth. Looking forward!

My original plan for my signature is to collect and analyze data of US businesses donating activity. However, I cannot find the exact donation amount because US businesses are not required to release this information. I tried researching in depth but still I cannot find a lot of information. I only found a general trend and very general data that I cannot really work in depth with. So, I changed my mind. Instead of doing US businesses, I will continue what I started during the summer at my internship and collect data of Hong Kong businesses donation amount. There is a large database where I can find companies' annual report and find their annual donation. I then put these data into a large excel sheet. Since the currency is Hong Kong Dollar and the names/categories are given in Chinese, I will also translate into english and change the currency to USD. For the past several weeks, I have been collecting the data (see picture below). I will then start analyzing by categories/industri...

Sept: Find general information about US businesses' donation trends over time Start exporting this information to an excel Find a mentor Oct: Start finding specific companies' donations amount Research at least 10 companies and put the data in the excel Nov: Find 10 companies information Start analyzing data Research on psychological factors behind social philanthropy Dec: Find 10 companies information Continue analyzing data Talk to a Hong Kong company during Christmas break Research on psychological factors behind social philanthropy Jan: Find 10 companies information Analyze Research on psychological factors behind social philanthropy Feb: Find 10 companies information Analyze Find potential local companies to talk with Mar: Find 10 companies information Finalize the data base / analyation Summarize psychological findings Apr: Publicize the database Approach at least one local business May: Share my project with the community

Hello! My name is Joy. My Signature project this year is about encouraging social philanthropy from businesses. I believe that it is through their generous donation that will help the underprivileged and make an impact in the world. My first encounter of “poverty” came from a school service trip to Cambodia I joined in 7th grade. We stayed in a remote village to teach kids English. These children, who had literally nothing, were so excited to learn in broken tents which they called “classrooms”. They came to class eagerly every day with broad smiles on their faces which contrasted starkly with their scrawny and undernourished bodies. My heart sank as I saw how harsh their living conditions were, yet their eyes were gleamed with hopes every morning when they saw me, as if I would be the one who could lift them out of absolute poverty. I was thirteen years old. I didn’t know what I could do. But I knew that I had a conviction to help the underprivileged, to make an impact in the commu...