On May 31st, the eve of Children's Day, Meituan released the latest data on its rural children's playground public welfare plan: the project was initiated by Meituan in conjunction with the One Foundation. Since its first launch in September 2020, over 5000 playgrounds have been built, covering 31 provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities directly under the central government) and more than 3000 townships across the country, directly benefiting more than 680000 rural children. The funding source supporting this scale is a public welfare mechanism driven by daily consumption transactions. In the past six years, with the active participation of 1.92 million public welfare merchants and 1.578 million individual donors, 620 million consumers have raised over 520 million yuan through daily consumption assistance.

The 5000th playground is located in Tongchang Township Central Kindergarten, Jinping County, Honghe Prefecture, Yunnan Province. It is a mountainous kindergarten where 80% of the students are left behind children. Previously, the playground in the park was made of cement and outdoor activities could not be carried out normally. After the playground was built, teachers now have the basic conditions to organize physical activities such as running and jumping games outdoors. The World Health Organization's (WHO) "Guidelines for Physical Activity, Sedentary Behavior, and Sleep in Children Under 5" and China's "Exercise Guidelines for Preschool Children (3-6 Years Old)" both recommend that young children engage in at least 60 minutes of moderate to high intensity physical activity (MVPA) per day. According to the evaluation data from the Behavioral Health Center of Beijing Normal University, after the construction of the playground, the average daily MVPA time of children in the kindergarten increased by more than 12 minutes, exceeding one-fifth of the recommended daily MVPA amount. WHO explicitly recommends that 3-4 year old children should not sit for more than 1 hour continuously. The implementation of the project reduces children's sedentary time in kindergarten by 14.53 minutes per day, and expands the tracking advantage to 22.39 minutes. In addition, 97.3% of principals reported a significant increase in teachers' enthusiasm for organizing outdoor activities - prior to this, many kindergartens had almost no structured outdoor sports classes.

Zhu, a student from Dalong Central Kindergarten in Yuping Dong Autonomous County, is weak and sickly, and does not like to exercise. In 2024, after the construction of the playground, teachers organized fun sports activities on the playground. Zhu gradually broke through himself, and his physical fitness significantly improved. He became the leader of the jumping game and confidently led the children to complete every movement at the front of the team. After the construction of the playground in Jinping, Yunnan, teachers began to take children out of the school gate to organize outdoor activities, and the children got to know the zebra crossing for the first time. This is the reality scale left by the "consumption as public welfare" mechanism beyond numbers.

▲ Tongchang Township Central Kindergarten in Jinping County, Honghe Prefecture, Yunnan Province has a new playground (Photo by He Junxi)

1.92 million merchants donated, 620 million consumers participated, and the entire donation process can be traced

The core of Meituan's "consumption is public welfare" mechanism is to embed public welfare participation in commercial transactions: after consumers place orders with Meituan's public welfare merchants, the merchants will automatically donate funds to the program. With the active participation of 1.92 million public welfare merchants and 1.578 million individual donors, 620 million consumers have raised over 520 million yuan in donations through daily consumption assistance.

The common challenges of traditional public welfare projects are high thresholds and poor sustainability: the public must actively initiate donation activities, the scale of participation is limited, and the supply of funds fluctuates with the pace of the activity. 'Consumption is Public Welfare' embeds donation actions into every daily order, eliminating participation barriers and allowing for continuous expansion of participation scale. The platform's daily transaction volume becomes a direct source of charitable donations. As long as the business ecosystem continues to operate, funds will continue to accumulate.

Financial transparency is a key variable in maintaining the continuous operation of this mechanism. Meituan has independently developed a donation tracking system, allowing each donor to accurately locate the specific kindergarten and floor location corresponding to their donation. Jin Jinping, Associate Professor at Peking University Law School and Director of Peking University Non Profit Organization Law Research Center, believes that this "visibility" is not only the disclosure of information, but also the empowerment of participation and the reconstruction of trust mechanisms, allowing public welfare to move from questioning "black box operations" to public trust based on digital rationality.

Starting from June 1st, users can search for keywords such as "public welfare footprint," "public welfare report," and "5000 playgrounds" on Meituan to view their own rural children's playground user public welfare report - every order completed at a public welfare merchant and ultimately placed in which kindergarten is fully recorded. The on-site visit activity for Black Diamond users will also be launched in the near future.

▲ Meituan Rural Children's Playground User Public Welfare Report

Transforming hardware investment into sustained education output and promoting the construction of rural public services

The physical construction of over 5000 playgrounds is just the starting point of this public welfare mechanism. The actual efficiency of the use of playgrounds highly depends on the outdoor activity organization ability of teachers. The Rural Children's Playground Public Welfare Plan synchronously promotes teacher capacity building, and has conducted 106 training sessions over the past five years, covering more than 6000 early childhood educators.

Children from Tongchang Township Central Kindergarten in Jinping County, Honghe Prefecture, Yunnan Province are playing games on the new playground (Photo by He Junxi)

From a more macro perspective, the construction of rural public services has long faced the problem of "how to continuously and effectively involve social forces". The Meituan Rural Children's Playground Public Welfare Program provides a reference operational sample: the funds generated from daily commercial transactions are the driving source of this mechanism; The digital tracking system ensures that every donation flow is traceable and traceable; Continuous teacher training will transform the built playground into measurable educational outcomes.

The person in charge of Meituan Rural Children's Playground Public Welfare Program stated that there are still a large number of rural kindergartens in China using cement fields that have not been safely renovated, and early childhood educators are unable to conduct outdoor physical education classes normally due to the lack of safe activity venues. The project will continue to promote the coordinated coverage of playground construction and teacher training, with the goal of making the "consumption as a public welfare" mechanism operate normally in more uncovered areas.