http://i.imgur.com/PZDaNhg.jpg

Hey everyone, my brother and I decided to contribute $20,000 for the making of Shenmue III. We spent many hours thinking about whether this is a good or bad decision. We spent $10,000 in 2012 to get our school off the ground and that went a long way. Because of our initial $10,000 pledge, the school received an amazing amount of attention in China, social media and gaming websites. I'll reiterate, We are not wealthy! This was a hard decision. We could have given $20,000 directly to building the school and it's programs but we feel that this pledge will lead to more exposure and support than what we could do through other mediums.

For those who don't know our school yet. We are called The "V.E.T. Program" (Volunteer English Teacher). You can find us on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/VolunteerEnglishTeacher?fref=ts&ref=br_tf We teach children and young adults English to help in their educational and career pursuits. Many of these kids come from small villages in the Guilin area and may not have an opportunity to learn elsewhere. You can go to the "about" section on the Facebook page to learn more.

We really need help in reaching our goals. We would love for you to like us on Facebook. We will eventually look outside ourselves and setup a way for donations to be made but we didn't want to distract from the Kick Starter or be overbearing donation hunters.

We decided to make the second $10,000 pledge a character in the game. We don't want to be a character attacking Ryo though. We are going to try and ask Yu Suzuki to let us have one of our Volunteer Chinese teaching assistants be a character in one of the villages. They deserve to be recognized for their hard work. They are volunteers and many of them come from poor rice farms.

We are also hoping that since we will be listed in the credits as a special sponsor that it can have our school with a logo and a website rather than our names.

I don't think any of this would be asking too much. I think it would help get attention to the school. We would love any assistance in helping us achieve this. We also would love to have Yu Suzuki come to the school some day but we won't don't want to be greedy.

Please, help our little school!
http://i.imgur.com/GS7Iwrq.jpg

Thanks everyone. It would be great to see a small school in one of the villages but I'm not having any expectations for what Yu would do. I don't want to make an assumption that we deserve special treatment simply because we gave money.. I'll ask him for these favors and if he says no that will be the end of it.

All we really want is to see the school grow and be able to turn it into something great. We are a non profit and we have a lot of needs at the moment. We get some help from the local college with books and rooms to teach but we would love to build a new headquarters where we have our own classrooms. With the recent attention we are getting in China it will help a lot. We want to recreate locations in Shenmue. My brother joked that he would call the living quarters the Come Over Guest House and have a front desk with a small fan and radio where he can tell people that they need to pay before they leave.

I've been a teacher in Japan for 7 years, and I saw your other post a couple of weeks ago. I would love to visit your school. It would be a great reason to visit Guilin too. I've always been interested in going to China, but I was always too intimidated because I don't know anybody there.
Anyway, I was gonna pm you, but I procrastinated and the half written draft has been sitting there for a while :D
I'll try to get around to it asap.

Please, let me know TB (and AXM).

We would love to have experienced teachers. Even if you don't know the language we still need assistants. And if you don't want to do that, you are still invited to come by. I'd love to meet fellow Shenmue Fans. We also would love to show you around.

Thanks for the like Miles P. Which one were you? I'll add you as a friend though, I don't use Facebook as much as my brother.

Thank you everyone for the kind words.

We have received an unimaginable amount of press over this. Most good, some bad. There are some places that seem to think we took food from the mouths of the kids and gave the money instead to the game.

http://n4g.com/news/1754367/chinese-school-for-underprivileged-kids-pledges-20-000-to-shenmue-3-kickstarter

We were made aware of this place a few minutes ago. My brother decided to respond to these people.. This is just one of several places giving us bad press.

All the outside money we receive goes to the kids. All advertising costs come from my brother and I. We have spent plenty of money in advertising over the years but none has ever got us the exposure we have received now. All the advertising we did in the past only got to western parts of China, now we have been getting attention not just in ALL of China, but globally. The best part is the money we spent didn't go to some large marketing corporation but to Shenmue and dinner with Y'S. It was the smartest decision we ever made.

We have been getting ton's of gaming sites in China trying to interview us. We have been on the news in Guilin (5M people). Even Eurogamer.net posted our story on Twitter a few minutes ago.

https://twitter.com/eurogamer

I'm having a hard time with the criticism, frankly. I have only had the intention of helping the school. I wish people would look at this and think about giving of their time and energy to helping others but some people only live to hate and criticize. If people are thinking we are spending our money unwisely, let's hear what they are doing to help the world and what better ways they are spending their money on charity...

judging by the thanks and approval that your post has acquired, it seems pretty clear that the shenmue community is behind you in this endeavor. However until you speak with Yu Suzuki directly its difficult to know the shape of the future and how all this will all turn out. My personal opinion is that this is a great opportunity for both Shenmue and the school, a match made in heaven as it were, almost an opportunity too good to be true! Maybe the publicity was a bit premature, given than Suzuki has not approved of anything yet, but i wouldn't be surprised if you heard from him very soon. (since Cedric just tweeted the eurogamer article).

i'm sure the community can help greatly in countering some of the negative spin.
good luck! and thank you!

I wish I would have avoided listing my requests. They were no more than day dreams. It really doesn't matter if Yu does anything for us or not. I don't want him to feel we are forcing this on him. We wanted to get people interested in the school and get more people involved in being teachers. Donations aren't even that important at the moment. We have local organizations that donate some and the attention we have been getting will encourage them to donate more.

Some people have accused us of doing this for fame yet no one even knows our real names. My brother has posted in a few places on Facebook so some people know him now but I have remained anonymous. I like it that way. :D

Forgot to thank you for this Sonoshee!

I really appreciate the help.

I almost switched to Monaco, Peter. It would have been better timing for me and it would have been awesome to meet you but I thought about it and figured it would be amazing for you to have dinner with Yu, alone.

There is a good chance someone will take another spot with you but if you get an exclusive dinner, congrats and make sure you learn some Japanese before you go.

My brother and I backed out of the 10K for the Fighting NPC and decided to put it toward the 6k Friendly NPC since we wanted to have one our Chinese teaching assistant in the game. We are trying to figure out where to put the other 4k now. Maybe the Lucky hit board or the Vendor... The vendor may be a good option for having our school in the game. V.E.T. Program's Hot dogs? Ice Cream? Lingerie?

That would put us at $20,500 but may work out better.

Now the focus turns to getting 3,400 more backers to pass Bloodstained and $950,000 more to watch Ryo's enemies rag-doll down a mountain after getting kicked in the face.

BS: 64,867 backers pledged $5,545,991 to help bring this project to life.

S3: 61,425 backers pledged $5,535,900 to help bring this project to life.

Didnt think we had a shot at the total backers.

I'm leaving for Guilin in 3 weeks to stay for maybe 6 months and I'm not sure if I'll be able to get on Shenmue Dojo while I'm there...