Sun Xiayan: Make employees with disabilities enjoy working in my shop

Team photo of Buy42.com (Sun Xiayan, the third of the second row)

The mid-summer of Wuhan is not very hot but still humid and suffocating due to the coming rain. Inside presently cool rooms of the beautiful Central-South Garden Hotel of Wuhan, youth leaders with disabilities are having a good time together.

Sun Xiayan, from the operation center of buy42.com, takes part in colorful activities offered by this training camp, while is also busy directing work progress in the center through phone calls and internet. This Wuhan Training Camp for Youth Leaders with Disabilities in Wuhan is held by ILO and other partners. She is looking forwards to communicate and share ideas, especially Buy42.com's experience of helping persons with disabilities, with young persons from different provinces,

Buy42.com, the first online charity shop in China, was built in March, 2011. Its off-line operation center was set up in Nantong, Jiangsu Province. Many people in China are still not very familiar with the concept of "online charity shop". Buy42.com combined foreign experience of community charity shop with electronic commerce that people could donate idle things, like clothes, toys to it, which will be processed in operation center and then sold online with a low price. 70% of its sales proceeds will be donated to grass-root nonprofit organizations and donators or buyers could decide which project they want to support.

Sun Xiayan is the chief operation officer and one of the founders of Buy42.com. The idea of Buy42.com initiated by Zhou Xian was very attractive and they, together with Xiao Chen, decided to put it into practice. At the beginning, they met many challenges. Xiao Chen said that at that time they worked at home and stayed up late every night. And then they witnessed how Buy42.com grew bigger and better. Now they are able to make both ends meet and have introduced their concept of public welfare to more and more people.

At the age of 12, Xiayan lost his right leg in a car accident and since then she had to walk with an artificial limb. After the accident, she insisted to receive inclusive education with other students. Back in school, although there were no accessibility facilities, she never asked for any preferential treatment. Xiao Chen said Xiayan is a very independent and strong person who would never bother others with things she could do by herself. If the classroom sited on top levels of school building, she would leave home earlier to make sure she would arrive there on time. And as it was almost impossible for her to go to bathroom during the short break, she would wait until all the classes were over. During her study in university, she was also managed to live on campus all by herself.

Xiayan said that parents' love and friends' supports are what keeps her strong. There is a nation policy that allows family with a disabled child to have another child. But her parents thought that to have one more child means giving up on her and they would never do that. Peers also treat her as a good friend and love to play with her.

It is lucky for Sun Xiayan to grow up in an inclusive environment who has now become a cheerful person. And her confidence is shown in every word and behavior of her. Xiao Chen praised her as a very smart and energetic person and a superexcellent colleague. Her good taste of fashion and openness to new ideas also leaves great impression on others. She thought that her life experience protects her from inferiority complex that could be found in some persons with disabilities. It let her know that prejudice against disability is harmful and people with different characteristics share equal rights of education, employment and pursue of happiness.

Sun Xiayan has tried different jobs before she joined Buy42.com. She has good professional skills that she studied IT in college and gained accounting certificate during her spare time. But finding an ideal job is not easy. She used to work for companies as an accountant but forced to quit her job all because of difficulties of commute after relocation of companies. She said that it is difficult for persons with disabilities to find a job and thus some of them would accept any job that offered to them. Once she declined to work as a welder in a factory, the director there phoned her parents to denounce her choice. She mentioned that some companies also pay fewer wages to disabled employees. If persons with disabilities are able to do equal work, why they are not equally paid? Persons with disabilities share the right to choose the job that meets their abilities and interests.

Xiayan loves to work for Buy42.com, because work there emphasizes the value of each person, product and thing. Buy42.com with its convenient online service and transparent financial reports offers a channel for every person to do some charity without extra trouble. Working here to make helping others become a part of more and more people's life is a wonderful experience for Sun Xiayan that realizes her self-value.

Xiayan once participated in Special Olympic Games in high school and it was the first time for her to meet so many persons with disabilities and to find out their living conditions. She was shocked when she was told that there are more than 85 million persons with disabilities in China. To provide decent employment opportunities for persons with disabilities became one of major programs of Buy42.com. Sun Xiayan, together with her colleagues, optimized the workflow of operation center and set up simple and standardized job posts in order to recruit persons with disabilities to join their team.

Buy42.com is more than offering employment opportunities but also trying its best to make disabled employees enjoy working here. It firstly guarantees persons with disabilities to be treated equally. It then creates an inclusive working environment for them as persons with disabilities are hoping to take part in every activity. For example, deaf-mute employees felt frustrated and were afraid of missing anything when they are unable to hear other people talking. The management team then decided to put all the notifications on a white board in the office to remove their worries. Lots of disabled employees said they truly enjoyed working there and were proud to be a team member of Buy42.com.

Xiao Chen said that a visit to their operation center to see how excellent disabled employees are would change other enterprises' attitude towards persons with disabilities. Due to less education they received, they learned slowly at first but as long as they know how to do they would become more focused and do a better job than other people. Thus, as long as fitful job posts and guidance are provided, persons with disabilities would become best employees.

The confidence of Sun Xiayan derives from her life experience in an inclusive environment. She appreciates what she has been through and hopes that more and more persons with disabilities are able to participate in social life. She mentioned that in the future, Buy42.com will organize more experiential events to let more people understand disability and create more employment opportunities for disabled persons to work in an inclusive environment. Like she has said, people might born to be different, but all are created equal. It is not only the responsibilities of a social enterprise, like Buy42.com, but also of the whole society to guarantee people's equal and full participation in society.