Personal Reflection On

ESI:
Exploring Social Innovation Program
Experiencing
Cicy Zhang, Mainland of China
Sep.30, 2015
It has been a whole month since we said good
bye to each other. The sunshine of San
Francisco has always been shining in my heart
in the days when we were not with each other.

Professional aspirations and

intention to apply
I have been volunteering in the Chinese
Society of Education for three years, helping in
the national education program called
Leadership For High School Students. Like a
lot of other Chinese young people, I have a
dream of contributing to the process of
changing Chinese eduction. The first time I
saw the promotion of ESI program, I sensed
that this is exactly what I to do and where I
could get inspiration from. Because San
Francisco and Stanford University is the center
of the worlds innovative leadership and social
entrepreneurship. I just simply cant miss this.

to know so many non-profits and enterprises

that are giving tremendous contribution to
peoples daily life. As a human being, I learned
forgiveness and gratitude at Delancey Street
Foundation, where mistakes can be forgiven
and a second chance of life can always be
given; I also learned that the only way to solve
a problem completely is to turn the problematic
persons into solutions. Philanthropy and nonprofits are not about helping other people from
a high perspective or position, instead they are
about helping oneself and one another out with
the joint efforts from the group. I learned how
closely education can be linked to media
industry at BAYCAT, and in order to achieve
your career goal how long a journey you need
to go through. I also learned a positive working
attitude at OpenIDEO where the loving smile
faces let me know that when you love that you
do nothing can be better than going to work.
Secondly, I learned the useful tools and
methodologies for social innovation. Not only
the design-thinking method equipped me with
a scientific thinking path of prototyping a
solution to social issues, but also the level-ofimpact model and introduction about social
sectors that can co-work on solving social
issues gave me a extensive view on a
diversified thinking mode. In China we take it
for granted that government has the
responsibility to settle everything and NGOs or
NPOs are here for only raising money and
helping the poor. Thus the cross-sector
thinking mode is exactly what we are lacking
of.

Takeaways from ESI

During the 12 days in San Francisco, the
inspiration I got, the skills I learned and the
change happened on me are far beyond my
imagination.
Firstly, what I learned is the inspiration of
change-making mindset from the organization
visits. For the first time I have got the chance
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Thirdly, but most importantly, I was so much

impressed to see what young people in other
countries are doing. The Calligraphy Therapy
for caring the aged, the studying gym
proposal, the fashion and the insight that You
cant fall in love solely with the concept Social
Enterprise, you can only fall in love with a
career that you want to do or a social issue
that you want to solve, all of these amazing
people are still giving me power to continue to
what Im doing now. For a moment I just
realized that actually on a national level maybe
there was or used to be conflicts between our
countries, but none of us is like the people that
the older generations in our countries are
describing. Instead, these people are friendly,
helpful, caring, always ready to share both
materials and thoughts. I am really curious to
see the potential of what we can create
together in the near future.

Next steps
For myself, I was lucky to have got the chance
to share with the other participants what me
and my team are doing to change the situation
of Chinese education. In my favorite V-talk and
Proaction Cafe session, they helped me
finding a lot of aspects that I have never
thought about before by challenging me with
harsh but important questions. They also gave
me suggestion to explore deeper into the
projects that Im doing. These experiences are
more than precious to have.

abroad. The next step will be entering deeper

into third-tier cities in China and covering more
students who dont have good access to high
quality education and the opportunities to open
up a bigger world for them. So Im right now
designing a new winter project in Zhenhai city,
Zhejiang Province, a winter camp where high
school students there can learn leadership
courses delivered by our university volunteers.
This project is initiated because of the
questions ask by Yuichiro in ESI, about how I
can help more so-called bottom students in
China who cant enter a very prestigious
school to access our projects, which did
inspired me a lot.

Word-of-advice to future ESI

participants
For anyone who has aspiration in leaning
about social innovation, ESI can give you
everything you need to start an idea. But ESI
cant give you anything if you are not curious
enough to explore the interesting people and
insights from here. I really hope this program
can approach more and more students all over
Asia especially China to enlighten more
promising future leaders to change the world.

Their inspiration also enlightened me on the

next step that I want to do to actualize my
dream. After 3 years in the Chinese society of
education, I have gained so much experience
and skills in organizing student programs and
developing leadership products, which have
already been in operation both in China and
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