Roots & Shoots: Lei Chen Wong of the Jane Goodall Institute

The name Jane Goodall calls to mind an adventuresome young woman who, starting in 1960, braved the wilds of Tanzania to live with and study Chimpanzees. Through years of intimate interaction with man’s closest relatives, Goodall contributed enormously to our knowledge of Chimpanzees and also to our understanding of our own species. She also helped to galvanize the environmental movement, through her lifelong crusade for wildlife and environmental conservation, a mission that spans and flourishes all over the world. Leading this movement in China is Lei Chen Wong, the Executive Director of the local branch of the Jane Goodall Institute, whose Roots and Shoots program teaches local youth a deep love and respect for nature. Agenda caught up with Lei to find out how she sews the seeds to grow China’s environmental movement from the roots up.

What do you do for the Jane Goodall Institute?
As the new Executive Director, I am in charge of the Roots & Shoots Beijing Office, helping to start new Roots & Shoots offices around China, and providing support to recently established ones. Our office also organizes Dr. Jane Goodall’s China tours and the translation of books into Chinese.

Currently, our main focus is Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots program, which is a global, youth-led environmental education program. We have a global mission that ties all of the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) offices and Roots & Shoots groups together in a fantastic network, but it is still broad enough to allow for each office to localize and address local environmental issues more accurately.

Tell us a little about yourself and how you became involved with this work.
Much of my background is in education and non-profits, most recently helping to run a non-profit international education program in Shanghai. My role was strategic, since, in the four and a half years that I was there, we needed to double the size of our operations and restructure in order to handle exponential growth.

The JGI-China was a perfect match for my skills and experience, as well as my passion. Dr. Jane Goodall is a genuine inspiration and I am honored, along with everyone involved with Roots & Shoots across China, to lead the effort to implement her vision here. Through the Roots & Shoots program, JGI-China has had enormous success on a grassroots level, with over 600 student groups nationwide now taking action to positively impact their communities, as well as animals and the environment. With China’s current five-year plan focused on promoting both economic and environmental sustainability, there is a wide scope of opportunities for JGI and Roots & Shoots to expand across China.

What is it like to work with Jane Goodall?
I hate to sound clichéd, but she truly is an inspiring figure. For instance, when I’m pulling long hours at the office, it is inspiring to remember that Jane travels 300 days a year. She realized early on that saving the chimpanzees, whose population is dwindling fast due to loss of habitat, would mean providing sustainable and ecologically friendly livelihoods for their human neighbors.

She also realized that investing in young people is our best hope for saving the environment, and all of the wildlife it contains. Jane is extraordinary in the compassion she has for people and animals, and most of all, in her faith in people to take positive action. She believes in hiring ex-poachers to be park rangers to protect the very areas they poached in. And she has faith in us to carry out her mission in China.

Dr. Goodall visited Beijing in September. Why was this year special?
2010 marked the fiftieth anniversary of her pioneering research in Gombe National Park in Tanzania, Africa. Fifty years ago, Dr. Goodall, who is today a world-renowned primatologist, conservationist and UN Messenger of Peace, first set foot on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, in what is now Tanzania’s Gombe National Park. Her discoveries showed that chimpanzees exhibit many characteristics that had previously been associated with human beings alone, and radically changed how we perceive animals, and how we perceive ourselves.

What are the everyday challenges and rewards of your work?
The passion, the empowerment and the creativity of these student groups never fail to amaze me. To see them make a positive, tangible impact on their local communities, and to see their actions rewarded makes it all worthwhile.

I get to work alongside really motivated and passionate people, including my staff and the staff at the other Roots & Shoots offices. I’m also really thankful for the positive responses we have received from the companies, organizations and individuals who donate the money, the time and the services crucial to achieving our goals. A lot of people really believe in what we are doing and how we are doing it.

As for the challenges, the biggest one is ensuring at any given time that we have enough resources to keep up with the demands of growth. We want to grow sustainably and stay true to our mission, and that requires making key strategic decisions.

What’s the key to motivating Chinese youth?
I’d say the key is to give them the best knowledge and resources so they can take action to positively impact the environment. As Jane always says, young people grow up in today’s world receiving very severe messages about how deplorable the environmental situation has gotten. Instead of feeling helpless and disengaged, Roots & Shoots empowers these young people with a strong sense of hope and optimism, and reminds them that their actions can make a positive difference in their local environments.

Once kids are inspired, and have been given the right encouragement, their projects are as varied as their imagination. At this year’s annual Roots & Shoots summit, I was really impressed, not just by the students’ projects, but by how proud and assertive they were about what they had accomplished. Another group held up signs that read, “I am responsible,” and asked people to pledge their commitment by signing their names. They made a very bold statement about how each individual can take responsibility for the way their actions effect the environment.

The impact of Roots & Shoots is life-long, as alumni of the program bring their experience and eco-friendly attitude into their workplaces. We now have many alums working in business and government, and some working very dedicatedly for the environment at NGOs such as Greenpeace. One of them even started a very successful local organization called Green Eyes.

How do you think JGI-China’s mission will develop in coming years?
We want to ensure that sustainable environmental education is accessible all across China. We plan on continuing to develop our wide-ranging network of active Roots & Shoots student groups, so they can implement positive change through actively learning about, caring for, and interacting with the environment.

Are there any programs you are really excited about at the moment?
I’m very excited about our Eco Class program. This is where corporate employees volunteer to teach an environmental curriculum in a local school. We are also looking forward to starting an environmental education curriculum in migrant schools by partnering with companies and organizations that already work with these schools. These are just two of the environmental programs we run, and we’ve got a lot more going at the same time.

What would be your advice for others who are looking to make a difference?
There are many ways to get involved that are meaningful to our organization and to our mission. In addition to volunteering for our programs, people can also support us by promoting our cause through their networks, connecting us to schools, companies, and organizations, attending our fundraising and other public events, donating financial resources, and by donating skills such as program development, website development, PR/marketing, and event planning.

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