Talk to the Founders of NGOCN (I)

By Jasmine, Jointing.Media, in Hong Kong, 2011-10-15

A bee and a fish, one flying in the air and the other swimming in the water. What happens when these two creatures meet?
The answer is NGOCN.

NGOCN is short for NGO Development and Communication Network. In 2003, SecondBee (screen names) and NotFish (screen names), who are almost ten years apart in age, met through a public welfare project. The following year they founded NGOCN together, and their friendship continues to this day because of this common cause.

Public service is a serious hobby

“Some people have not met the right moment and the right thing – the moment to change and the thing to be,” says TwoBees.

NGOCN is what he is destined to do in his 30-39 years, and it is the starting point of his growth in this period.

SecondBee met me at a Japanese restaurant not far from my hotel to take care of my unfamiliar place. He was of medium build, wore a light-coloured short-sleeved shirt and spoke in Mandarin with a Hong Kong accent, not too fast. He had just returned to Hong Kong from a business trip and looked a little haggard and tired.

SecondBee currently works as an environmental and social responsibility consultant, and NGOCN is one of his hobbies in his spare time. Not to break up the old life,” he says, “is an important limit to doing charity work in your spare time. According to him, charity work is different from sports and leisure activities, and is a serious hobby.

He grew up in Hong Kong, and after graduating from high school, he went to university to study agricultural economics. His parents were very open-minded and did not force him to study engineering or economics, which were popular at the time, but told him: ‘You can choose whatever you want.

Why did you choose agricultural economics? I asked.

“It just felt different,” He said.

Curious about the origin of his screen name ‘SecondBee’. No particular symbolism. When I was at college there was a popular dance song called Bumblebee and I was the second child in the family, so the combination of the two was SecondBee.

SecondBee was a music youth, playing guitar and bass at university.. This hobby continues to this day. He now performs occasionally in Hong Kong to entertain himself and his friends. Ask him about his ‘masterpiece’.

“I can’t think of my favourite song, but I was more satisfied with this performance in 2009,” says he, “I’m in a band and I have to work together.

He co-founded NGOCN with NotFish in 2004, when he was in his early 30s and working for an international NGO. Although the platform of this internationally renowned NGO was large, many of his personal ideas could not be realised. NGOCN was a way of balancing his ideals with his work. For NotFish, public welfare seems to be a combination of his work and his hobby.

NotFish is from Guangdong. Described as ‘post-80s’, he worked at the Centre for Citizenship and Social Development at Sun Yat-sen University and began to focus on public welfare in 2000, and a trip to northwest China in 2001 left a deep impression on the mountainous regions. Before founding NGOCN, NotFish, like most people, fulfilled his desire for public welfare by helping students. By chance, he became a full-time publicist.

JM: What are your hobbies? Which one are you most passionate about?

NotFish: Music, reading, meditation.

JM: Is public service more of a hobby or a career for you?

NotFish: What is public interest? If it refers to all public interests in general, then it is a career for me. If it refers only to

what I’m doing at the moment, then it can only be described as ‘Phased undertaking + hobby’.

Translated by DeepL

Edited by Wind

Talk to the Founders of NGOCN（II）

Talk to the Founders of NGOCN(III)