1At the time of the interview Liu was a 33-year-old man who had been engaged in Sociology Studies at F University for more than 2 years without getting a degree. He gave up his studies to engage in public welfare. He is the head of the NGO named SF in Shanghai.

2SF is a public welfare organization dedicated to providing long-term, stable, pluralistic and high-quality community education services for children aged 5–14 years in floating population communities. At the beginning of its establishment, SF was mainly a tutorial class, with volunteers going into migrant children’s homes to give some help on academic subjects, such as geography, biology, chemistry, history, and politics. In the process of continuous exploration, organizational activities are gradually moving towards a project-based operation. At present, there are seven sub-projects, such as an evening shift of care services, a weekend interest class, winter and summer vacation cooperative activities, a library project, personal tutoring, a school for parents, and outdoor development. Up to now, the project has provided more than 100,000 hours of service to more than 2,000 migrant children and their parents. Its organizational vision is to help every migrant child who has been receiving the services for a long time grow into a “confident, optimistic, honest and inclusive” citizen.

3First, we shall look at the foundation and independent process of SF. SF was sponsored by some volunteers of the Youth Community Volunteer Association for the NGO Home-Loving in the Jing’an district, Shanghai, and was incubated by the NGO HL. Initially, SF was founded when several classmates and friends “thought that migrant children are pitiful,” so they germinated the idea of helping them improve their academic performance. Because one of the founders had already volunteered/worked in the NGO HL, SF was attached to it as a project. The organization started in 2003 and started its activities based on volunteers. Since 2010, it has recruited and professionalized project commissioners. There are currently four full-time staff members. SF has set up two community centers in the Jing’an district and the Minhang district in Shanghai. The center in Jing’an still belongs to the Shanghai Jing’an Youth Community Volunteer Association of the NGO HL. The one in Minhang completed its independent registration in November 2014 and established the SF Community Children’s Service Center in the Minhang district of Shanghai.

4The population regulation policies had an effect on the development of migrant children, families, and organizations. Liu clearly stated that the population control policy from 2013 to 2014 had a very obvious impact on migrant children and their families, the relationship between social organizations and the government and SF’s future development. For migrant children and families, Liu believed that the control policy directly affected migrant workers’ means and ability to make a living, leading to the direct consequence that the cost of living in the central city rose sharply, and those migrant children had to follow their parents to the suburbs or leave Shanghai to return to their hometown. For SF, it meant that the recipients of services gradually disappeared. Liu also considered abandoning existing activity sites and focusing on more remote suburban counties. However, he insisted that he would not change the organization’s service objectives into ones serving left-behind children. This was because left-behind children were no longer in Shanghai. Liu believed that they did not have the resources to serve left-behind children at that time. “We should provide service for migrant children in Shanghai, which is our orientation,” he said. “We are unable to help those who have gone back home, but we will keep in touch with them and provide some help if necessary. It is impossible for us to serve them after they go back to their home. Because our orientation was to help migrant children in Shanghai. There might be different groups of migrant children at different time, but we would always provide service to them.”

5When it comes to the relationship between SF and the government, Liu clearly pointed out the changes after the population control policy and stated his own attitude towards cooperation with the government. First of all, the main resource of SF came from foundations, so there was no need to fawn over the government to get funding. Although the development process had also been supported by the government in providing activity sites, SF had been renting commercial sites for several years. Secondly, to obtain resources from government projects required too much administrative work, such as boring meetings, preparing many meaningless forms, and doing other cumbersome procedures. Liu was not good at it and even resisted doing these jobs, so he planned to never get projects from the government in the future. Thirdly, the population control policy did not greatly reduce the existing resources of SF (there were not so many previously), but Liu could still feel the change in daily communication—the government guided SF to serve local children, but he rejected this. Therefore, Liu believed that the current attitude of the government did pose strict restrictions, but on the other hand, the government also did not support the existence of such organizations. Compared with the strong support of the Shanghai governments at all levels for affairs involved with migrant children from 2004 to 2005, this change was still obvious.

6Liu believed that the restriction of the population control policy on social organizations serving migrant children could reveal the mental status of government staff: “The tightening of population policy has some reasons. There may be a red line in the government aimed at migrant children, or the reduction of resources or …. That might have some effects, or it is related with people within the government, because many of the officials within the government are also local people who will naturally keep some distance from outsiders. To be honest, they are not particularly supportive.” For another group of people (maybe not government officials), the attitude towards migrant children was trickier: “There may be some people who feel that we should help these children, but they don’t want these children to reach a certain height …. That is to say, I hope to help these children, but the purpose of helping these children is not really to help these children, but to help these children grow up and not to disturb the social order.”

7Liu also talked about the differences between government projects and foundation projects. According to Liu, in most cases SF applied for subsidies from various types of foundations with its existing projects instead of applying for government-funded projects. In addition to the increasing neglect of migrant children in government projects, he repeatedly emphasized the differences between the two types of sponsors: to apply for government projects, he needed to attend various meetings, fill in various forms, and often accompany officials to show achievements, and the final audit was very “strict” and required him to provide a large number of hard-to-get documentations. Liu was not good at doing such procedures, and he even felt disgusted by them. Foundation projects are much better, and there are some materials to be filled in in the audit process, but it is not cumbersome. More project inspections occur in the process, and members of the foundation will follow up on the progress of the project from time to time to understand the specific situation.

8According to Liu’s understanding, different working methods may imply different concepts: government departments do not truly care about migrant children, nor do they care about the real effects of the project; they care about the political achievements, so they focus on the final audit materials. Most foundations are more concerned about the real effects of the project and are usually subjected to (overseas) public welfare industry working methods. Influenced by the working mode of (foreign) public welfare sectors, process management (a few foundations with government backgrounds work in ways similar to that of the government) is given special importance.