As a native Chinese woman who speaks nearly flawless English, Mei Xu understands the value of being bilingual. Her language skills have been instrumental in helping her build a small candle importing company, Pacific Trade International of Rockville, Md., into a $50 million-a-year business that sells decorative candles to U.S. chains such as Target and Bed Bath & Beyond.

Two years ago, rather than accept yet another invitation to yet another charity event, Xu decided to start her own organization dedicated to "helping kids to learn another language at a very young age so they can really participate, when they grow up, in the global economy."

She has invested about $200,000 of her own money so far in the Mei Xu Cultural Exchange Foundation, primarily setting up a program affiliated with Sidwell Friends School in Washington, one of the few independent schools in the country with a Chinese language program. She bought the software to allow Sidwell students to have video-conference interaction with the English immersion school in Hangzhou, China, that Xu attended starting at age 12. She also sends English-language books, magazines and newspapers to the school in China and hopes to sponsor visits by Chinese and American students to each other's countries.

"I feel very strongly about building that cultural understanding without preexisting stereotypes," Xu said. "The best way to do that is to experience it yourself."

Xu hopes to take the program beyond Sidwell's high-school-level Chinese program. She'd like to use her foundation to encourage the teaching of Chinese to American students at a much younger age.

"It really must start young because Chinese is such a hard language," she said, but she faces fundraising hurdles. So far, all the money for the foundation has come from Xu herself, but as president of a busy and growing company and mother of two young sons, she's been hard-pressed to spend more than 10 hours a week on her project. She'll need more staff on the foundation and more donors, too.

"It'll take millions of dollars," she said. "I have the resources to do it better in terms of contacts and know-how. I just have to find the time."