Featured Partner of the Week: Peach Foundation
This week, we wanted to take a moment and highlight our very first partner: Peach Foundation.
Peach stands for Promoting Education, Art, and Community Harvest. Created by a group of U.S. citizens in 2001, Peach Foundation is a California non-profit organization with no political or religious affiliations. The Peach Foundation was formed to help children from the poorest parts of China obtain an opportunity to complete a college education.
Here is an interview we conducted with the CEO of Peach Foundation, Ruth Jeng:
“... After her retirement in the Bay Area, Ruth Jeng started the Peach Foundation with the mission of enabling impoverished children in China to complete a college education. Her goal was to help students transcend the poverty cycle by promoting art, education, and community harvest. To date, her foundation has implemented the following programs: college loans, financial aid, small living loan, libraries, teacher training, summer camp, a medical fund, and a clothing fund.
When asked why she began her work, Jeng replied, “The bottom line is that I can’t bear to see other people’s pain. My motivation was to minimize my own pain, which was caused by seeing poor but motivated children unable to receive an education because of their birth. Through helping the children of Peach, I am also helping myself reduce my pain.”
All her life, Jeng had seen people suffer and had felt compelled to do something. Yet, she felt she had done little to help all of those who were in pain. One day, she decided that enough was enough and that she needed to roll up her sleeves and take action by creating her own non-profit...
“To be honest, I did not want to start Peach at first because I knew the responsibility associated with starting an organization. I don’t like to deal with administration; I would rather deal with recipients. I knew that were I to be the head of Peach, however, I would need to work with administrations.”
Jeng was hesitant and in the back of her mind, she wondered why she was looking for trouble. At the time, she had just recently retired and she was afraid to take on an official project, which she knew required responsibility.
Any reservations Jeng harbored towards starting Peach disappeared in2000, when she took 13 rural Chinese children, from another foundation she was volunteering for at the time, to a metropolitan area for a week. One of the kids, Jeng remembers, had said that his dream was to visit Chongqing. He had never gone to a city before, although he only lived four hours away from one. Another child was near-sighted but had no glasses. Jeng decided she needed to go to China to fulfill the boy’s dream and take the other child to get eyeglasses. The following year, Jeng returned to China to spend time with the same 13 children.”
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