OCEF Operations Back in Full Swing upon Completion of Registrations
December 20, 2019
Dear OCEF donors and volunteers:
The most wonderful news since the creation of OCEF in 1992 has arrived! As of December 13, 2019, OCEF has completed the registration process for our newly established representative office in Guangdong Province, which covers a total of 19 provinces and autonomous regions, including Guangdong, Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Shandong, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Ningxia. Together with the previously completed registrations in Sichuan Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, we can now resume full operation in all of our target regions. As far as we know, OCEF is the first US-based grassroot education charity to accomplish this feat since the implementation of the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Administration of Activities of Overseas Nongovernmental Organizations in the Mainland of China in 2017.
We would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere gratitude for the Education and Public Safety Department staff in Guangdong Province, Sichuan Province, and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. We would also like to thank OCEF volunteers and employees who painstakingly worked through unimaginable amount of details. Many a time we hit a “dead end,” navigating this vast and intricate legal maze seemed an insurmountable task, and completing the registration process appeared to be an impossible goal. Well, almost impossible—WE DID IT!
Last but not least, we must thank our volunteers and employees who, since 1992, worked unbelievably hard to process all the donations through local banks and post offices. There were times when they had to risk personal safety by physically transporting hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to the banks and post offices, back in the time when the banking system was less sophisticated. All of us—the donors, the volunteers, as well as the aid recipients—give you our most heartfelt thanks.
With the establishment of the three OCEF representative offices in China and their designated bank accounts, this process will be highly streamlined. From now on, donations can be transmitted directly from OCEF’s U.S. bank account to the representative offices’ accounts in China and then dispersed to designated recipients or directly appropriated to the Library Program or the School Improvement Program. Each representative office will complete third-party audit annually and make financial and tax statements accessible to the public in order to safeguard our cherished financial transparency.
Completing these registrations and opening representative offices mark a new beginning for the foundation. In the uncertain times when our registrations were pending, we had to put some programs on hold, even suspending fundraising temporarily, which has left reaching the fundraising target for the year in jeopardy. With all aid programs soon to be resumed, many students and schools are in need of funding.
We reopened the donation channels as soon as we passed this legal hurdle and would like to ask you to consider making a year-end gift to OCEF in this most wonderful time of the year. Anything we give, we bring relief, disproportionately large relief to their daily struggles. Please visit the OCEF donation portal to find out all the ways you can help. For students in Sichuan, the 1-to-1 option is now open, and there are 141 elementary school students, 346 middle school students and 161 high school students to be helped. For students in other regions, we expect to have this option open around January 10, 2020. For further information about the 1-to-1 option, please contact
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OCEF is now in its 27th year and entering its prime. So many of us, in all capacities and through winding paths, have found OCEF to be an answer to that same yearning, home away from home, and the family we chose. This little, yet unyielding grassroot educational foundation is not only work of our making, it is the wind beneath our wings.
‘Tis the season for gatherings, for gratitude, and for hope and love. We wish you, the thousands of donors and volunteers all around the world, peace, joy, and continued success. Have the happiest holidays! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
