Hello, Neighborhood services Inc. board members

I am Tia this actually is short for my "real" name Tianzi. I am so glad that I am

selected to be a member on your board. Before we actually work together I would like to introduce myself a little bit.

It s a long long story how I ended up going college in the US and found my interest in non profit. but I will try to make it short. I made up my mind to study abroad at my junior year in my high school. I have read all of those self made American dream stories and I figured why can't I do the same thing! I don't want to spend my whole life in the same place i love to go out and see how big the world is. that basically what drove me here. But it is not that easy especially when it comes to learning English and getting adapted to a totally different new social environment. I experienced what you guys called cultural shock. I was really shocked but most of them are in a good way. It has been one year since I got here, I am now a second year junior student majoring in actuarial science and business. During this year a lot of my perspectives has been changed and I got to know many new ideas. One of them is non profit sectors.

Community services in China is not a big deal in either educational institutions or social institutions. but after I came here I realized how important a role NPOs play in our society either in terms of the well being of people and of the social economics. It can help better distributing and relocating scare resources and reaching to the place where government policies and free marketing economics fail to get. Getting to work inside a board for non profit organization is really a good opportunity for me to carry out my passion at the same time making the world a better place. Also I believe there are many good ideas that I can borrow to help building the NPOs industry in China.

What also excites me about this program is working as a board member is I see it as a personal transformational experience. Due to my education or other social impacts I have never thought of that if I have paid too much attention to myself's needs and have done too little to pay back to community from which you enjoy so much privileges. After all the services I have participated in here I realized that the things that I used to take granted for are actually not possessed by others and I am not entitled for any of these privilege that I enjoy. Doing community services really changed me into a more caring person. By interacting with regular volunteers and people who we helped I feel being a part of something larger than myself. Lots my chinese friends often say that they don t feel belong , I think the best way to belong to somewhere it is to contribute your part to it. It makes me feel at ease and at home.

The other thing excites me to join the board is the professional developmental aspects of this initiative. One of the reasons that I have my current major is that I love doing business. I am really excited when I picture my self sitting in a board meeting room and doing real business along with professionals. By taking last a few classes I have get a more thorough and rational view for non profit organizations. There are a lot more corporation and business aspects involved in than I thought. A day-to-day of a board member is really detailed oriented and it is far from enough to only have a make-it-a-better-world mindset. Their responsibilities include fundraising , budget planning, handling relationship with management, regular employees and public relationship . It also involves specific legal issues regarding taxes, profit making and political affiliation etc. I believe the professional and leadership skills I have learned from this experience will all become a valuable assets which I can apply to my future work either for for profit or non profit organizations and more importantly give me a better insight of American society which I can not learn from classroom.

As for my previous experience, I have volunteered at pedestrian church food pantry, participated in buckeyethon last school year. and I have also been on the buck I serv trip twice which are for habitat for humanity and Pinellas County Sea Grant respectively,and I am about to go on for the third time this winter as a trip leader headed to DC. working for Food and Friends. These experiences give me a better knowledge for real world impact a non profit can made than just reading its mission on a handbook. Also through the interaction with volunteers I got to know the problems they encountered and how to give them a better volunteering experience and make the whole process more efficient. By working with people who benefit form this NPOs I developed a compassion for them instead of just seeing them as a number or a social group on books. Besides non profit sectors I also have previous experience in regular business. I used to work for LG electrics as a office assistant, also work for north commons as a student assistant and work for the office of first year experience connections team.All of those experience provide me with a better people skills and a good work ethnic.

Since we have not started this project yet I don't really any questions but I do have some concerns and worries. Although I am a business major but I have not taken any accounting or finance classes I worry about that I am not be able to handle very specialized finical related works. Also I have never been working in a board level business setting before. I would like to hear some tips on how to be more professional in terms of talking , writing and how to maintain relationship with my co board members especially given English is my second language and there is cultural differences.

In spite of those concerns I am more than happy to learn as I go and I am very confident with my ability to picking up new skills. Based on the strengthquest I am a strong leaner! : ) And more important is that passion for the same cause knows no cultural differences. Thank you very much for partnering with our program and providing me with a amazing opportunity. and I can't wait to meet all of you!

Sincerely,

Tianzi Xie