Creation of ICSO
In May 2017, Gates Yao and Carol Yi, the two core founders of ICSO, met through a public welfare activity held in Shenzhen, China. They had in-depth exchanges and discussions on the development of general global welfare and the current situation of public interest in China because they had the same study background. After that, they found that they both had the identity of an international student and wanted to make some efforts for global public welfare undertakings. They shared this idea with Richard Xie, co-founder of ICSO. Since then, the three have hit it off and jointly established the International Commonweal Support Organization with the original intention of gathering the strength of global Chinese students and promoting the development of global public welfare undertakings.
In July 2017, the three founders (Richard Xie, Carol Yi, and Gates Yao) signed the ICSO organizational charter, officially announcing the establishment of ICSO in Shenzhen, China, and defining it as a global international NGO and NPO organization. At the same time, it also represented the three main public welfare areas of ICSO in the World: Education of poor students in mountainous regions, environmental protection, and social assistance. The first charity auction for “Longchuan development” was held in Shenzhen last month.
Development of ICSO
In August 2018, in order to better build a global public welfare organization and carry out public welfare projects, ICSO public welfare organization officially adopted the management system of cloud management, local implementation, that is, to set up local NPOs in each project implementation country or cooperate with local NPOs to complete the project, and ICSO public welfare organization is only responsible for cloud management. It is also because of the formulation of the cloud management system that ICSO officially decided that the headquarters would only retain the Council and Secretariat for unified management, and set up three independent branches around the world: ICSO CN (China), ICSO UK (UK) and ICSO us (United States).
The transition clarified how cross-border projects would be planned, how information would be shared, and how local implementation would remain accountable to each affiliated organization.
Following this organizational transition, ICSO expanded local cooperation and program delivery through its affiliated organizations in China, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
In December 2018, the ICSO UK branch was officially established in Loughborough. And ICSO’s global coordination team was formally established in Hong Kong, China. ICSO headquarters was officially transformed into a management team of a worldwide public welfare organization. In the same month, ICSO held an annual meeting of the International Commonweal Support Organization in Hong Kong. We Invited the founders and chairpersons of many famous public welfare organizations in the Asia Pacific region to participate in the meeting to conduct in-depth exchanges and discussions on the development of general global welfare.
Rise rapidly of ICSO
In January 2020, COVID-19 first broke out suddenly in Wuhan, China. ICSO CN branch reported the information to ICSO cloud headquarters in Hong Kong as soon as it received it. After receiving the report, ICSO cloud headquarters in Hong Kong attached great importance to rapid response. Three days before the Chinese new year, it urgently requested all staff of the ICSO CN branch to stop taking leave, enter the state of war preparation, and start the global material procurement plan. Three subordinate units worldwide have delivered the first batch of masks (100000) to Wuhan hospital within five days after the closure of Wuhan. The affordable mask purchase plan and medical material assistance plan were launched in the follow-up. A total of 200000 masks and 3 tons of other medical materials were transported to Wuhan, which helped ensure the material support of the epidemic in Wuhan early.
ICSO’s cloud management system also highlights the advanced nature of its system in the face of the global epidemic situation. It improves the efficiency of the ICSO office and makes it farewell to the era of “information isolated island” in the organization. Through the collaborative office system, ICSO can more conveniently and quickly realize the collaboration among internal organizations at all levels, departments, and personnel and provide employees with an efficient collaborative work platform. The cloud management mode enables ICSOs to rely on Internet technologies such as “big data, cloud computing, platform, and mobile Internet.” So that collaborative software can continuously create new value for ICSO in project management, human management, and other aspects; Now, ICSO can form supporting measures to complete the closed-loop of the whole work.
In June 2020, the ICSO CN branch was selected as one of the top 10 non-governmental public welfare organizations 2020 by China CCTV because of its excellent performance in the process of the anti-epidemic, and then rated as the world’s leading 30 general welfare organization with high value by NGO 2.0. In the same year, ICSO headquarters, to strengthen the development of the ICSO CN branch in China and better cover China’s more Chinese mainland, helped the ICSO CN branch add one new office in Shenzhen, Guangdong, 1 Hunan Hengyang office, and 1 Yangquan offices in Shanxi.
In July 2020, to strengthen the global influence of ICSO and the scale effect of its projects. ICSO officially joined the international common white paper union and became the certification body of the general assembly of the international common white paper union. After that, ICSO will cooperate to promote and implement global public welfare projects and recommend excellent public welfare programs within the alliance. It strengthened cooperation with the core institutions of icwp Alliance (United Nations, National Institute of social innovation and charity, Stanford University, and Skye University. Strengthen the long-term goal of global public welfare interconnection and integration.
In December 2020, ICSO officially joined the Education Council under icwp and responded to the call to “build a world-class public welfare professional education.” Reached formally strategic cooperation with China Youth Philosophy Institute and Skye university to jointly develop and promote a high-quality public welfare professional education system suitable for global youth. ICSO Cooperate with Shenzhen International Foundation College to set up subordinate branches as a pilot to let high school students in their schools accept the public welfare education courses provided by ICSO. Learn how to correctly treat general welfare, participate in public welfare activities and initiate and operate public welfare projects.
In April 2021, ICSO also reached cooperation with many activities, competitions and educational institutions in various fields around the world (Shenzhen Institute of international public welfare, health occupation students of America, Sike business competition, etc.). Join hands to build global public welfare influence through various activities around the world, and cultivate global excellent public welfare talents to supplement the current market gap. In addition, we will increase the popularity of global public welfare knowledge and popularize the commercialization and sustainability of public welfare.
In August 2021, ICSO cloud headquarters in Hong Kong conducted existing data statistics. As of August 2021, ICSO has independently operated more than 150 public welfare projects and cooperatively worked on more than 100 general welfare projects around the world, with more than 5000 volunteers, more than 50 managers and researchers, more than 300 global cooperation institutions, and total international fundraising of more than the US $2 million. ICSO has officially become a national public welfare organization recognized by major NGOs and governments worldwide and has made specific contributions in its three core areas. ICSO is making great strides to gather the strength of international Chinese study abroad and promote the development of global public welfare.
In December 2021, ICSO officially reached strategic cooperation with the PACS center of Stanford University to strengthen educational research in the field of global public welfare. Translate and sort out PACS journals, papers, magazines, and books, and translate them into multiple languages for reading by more than 5000 non-English speaking public welfare organizations and related enterprises and institutions worldwide. In addition, ICSO will also refine and summarize the high-quality contents and create materials suitable for global youth learning and reference. Together with Stanford PACS, they researched some areas where ICSO is good. Each branch of ICSO gave full play to its advantages and jointly published many articles on Stanford PACS.
Future of ICSO
In April 2022, ICSO reached strategic cooperation with the National Research Center for social innovation and charity. This cooperation has once again helped ICSO make substantial progress in public welfare industry research and general welfare professional education and provided a solid foundation for the goal of building ICSO from a global public welfare organization into a worldwide public welfare platform proposed by the eighth Standing Council of ICSO in 2022. Subsequently, ICSO will strengthen multilateral cooperation with icwp alliance, the United Nations, and all parties. In addition to providing high-quality public welfare projects for the world, ICSO will also offer the world a high-quality general welfare consulting platform, high-quality public welfare industry solutions, and high-quality public welfare professional education system. Build a public welfare matrix with the profound influence of globalization as the core, icwp, the United Nations as the leadership, ICSO as the coordination and communication channel, and 5000 public welfare organizations, NPOs, NGOs, governments, enterprises, and foundations as the backbone.