Passion may ignite a spark in Senior Michelle Tan, but her ambition is what keeps the fire going. In 2013, Tan decided to turn her dreams into reality by starting a non-profit organization, Bounty & Bounty.
Her organization focuses on intercultural exchange between nations, specifically in the arts and culture. It is stationed in and approved by both the United States and China.
The organization is currently planning a large project with an art museum in Beijing, where they will send about a dozen Chinese contemporary artists to Africa on a safari to create an intercultural gallery exhibition.
Right now, Tan’s organization is mainly reaching out to African ambassadors, but is hoping to speak with the United Nations.
Tan has no specific goals in mind right now, but she does hope to bring her organization over to the United States. Eventually, she wants to expand her organization to other parts of the world.
Tan also wants to help shed a positive light on non-profit organizations in China. Since there have been a lot of scandals regarding nonprofits in China, many people do not trust them.
Although Tan holds the highest position in her organization, she does admit that she has experienced difficulties with discrimination as she works mainly with adults. Sometimes, Tan’s father would be the one to go out and talk with people while she would pretend to be an intern.
“It can be intimidating and weird sometimes because there’s definitely something odd about a high school student trying to lead all of these people and trying to get them to do what you want,” Tan said. “There are definitely some who are skeptical and some who don’t want to participate.”
Despite the discrimination, Tan believes that the hardest part of getting started is now behind her.
“The hardest part was finding where to go and what you want to see happen,” Tan said. “The people I surrounded myself with really helped me with that because forming connections and meeting new people helped me spark ideas and it showed me how many possibilities there are.”
Fortunately for Tan, knowing the right people was a major factor that helped her get started. Since she had more connections in China, she grounded her organization there.
Two years ago, she had an internship with Hunan TV station in China. Her mother was also originally a news correspondent there, so they knew some of the people who worked at the station.
After reaching out to them, her organization ended up being sponsored by the station. She also has a cousin who works for an art marketing company in China, so she had a lot of connections with contemporary artists and people who work with the museums too.
“It was during my internship I learned that I’ve always been interested in culture and became more aware of the importance of being involved in the community,” Tan said. “There is a lot of power within humanities.”
Through hours of hard work, Tan has come a long way since 2013. She first started with an idea of collecting money and donating it to poor villages, as well as donating books to children.
“I had no expectations when I first started,” Tan said. “But right now it seems like we’re doing larger scale work. Having met a lot of people who are used to doing larger scale projects, I got ideas from them and I became more ambitious.”
Although Tan’s organization is still in its early stages, Tan sees a bright future ahead. Fortunately for Tan, she has also been able to deal with the stress of balancing school, extracurricular activities and organization work.
“It is stressful but surprisingly, I feel like I am sleeping more than I did my sophomore or junior year,” Tan said. “Since I had so much to do, I became much more aware of taking better care of myself and improved in time management. I’m planning to continue this throughout college or throughout my life. Non-profit work is really something you can get into. That can be all you do for a living.”
TCHS School Newspaper