The Enlight Foundation is a private grant making institution founded by Chinese billionaire Yongping Duan, known as the “Godfather” of the Chinese smartphone industry. ¹ Duan earned the nickname of the “Chinese Buffett” after spending over $600,000 to have lunch with Warren Buffett. ² The Enlight Foundation funds organizations with a left-of-center agenda like the Voter Participation Center, ³ Solutions Journalism Network,⁴ and Global Savvy. ⁵

Duan’s spouse Xin Liu runs Enlight, who directs donations from her photo-journalism experiences⁶ with inequality in education, and an interest in driving youth as social change agents. ⁷

Funding Agenda

The Enlight Foundation invests millions of dollars in educational groups ranging from kindergarten through college. ⁸

Enlight gave $3 million to the Presidio Graduate School. ⁹ The New York Times recommended Presidio as the best business school to learn how to change the world. Some of its graduates have created environmentalist energy companies, manufacturing wind turbines and electric cars. The University of California ranked Presidio number one in social impact and number two in environmental sustainability. ¹⁰

Another recipient is the Solutions Journalism Network, an educational institution instructing journalism students to report in such a way as to guide readers toward generally left-leaning so-called “solutions” to social problems. ¹¹ Journalists are trained not to limit their reporting to the problem, but also to provide an “evidence-based response”¹² focused on “curing” social problems,¹³ like refugee and immigration issues. ¹⁴

Enlight funds Catalyst, which educates high schoolers and teachers on left-of-center issues like the negative impacts of the war on drugs on minority communities. ¹⁵

Enlight donated a million dollars to Global Savvy to foster its efforts towards educating K-12 students. It claims a person’s culture and history is the basis for relationships and that diversity should be celebrated and elevated in the educational system. Global Savvy focuses its curriculum on issues like migration, poverty, climate change, war, recycling, and diversity. ¹⁶

A sample lesson promoted the idea that a Chinese vegetable-based diet fostered longevity better than the American diet; another proposed that access to water is contingent upon race and wealth. ¹⁷ Global Savvy was founded by Dana Mortenson who was inspired to educate students while at Columbia University after witnessing post 9/11 xenophobia in New York City. It seeks to work with 10,000 middle and high schools in diverse settings with a goal of reaching 5 million students. ¹⁸

Enlight supports the left-of-center Voter Participation Center, a voting registration group that drives Democrat voting activity. ¹⁹

Leadership

Yongping Duan founded the Enlight Foundation in 2004. His net worth is estimated to be $1.5 billion. ²⁰

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