Chinese clan association Leong Khay Huay Kuan will double its Education Trust Fund to $20 million from next year to help more needy students and extend its aid to include all Singaporeans, irrespective of race or Chinese dialect, at the five public-funded universities here.
The association, a Hokkein clan group whose 220 members trace their roots to a city in China's Fujian province, started a $10 million fund in 2013 to help members' children who were undergraduates. Last year, it signed agreements with the National University of Singapore, Singapore Management University (SMU), the Singapore University of Technology and Design and the Singapore Institute of Technology, allowing non-members' children to benefit as well, although one of their parents must still be a native Hokkein speaker.
Under the agreements, Leong Khay pledged a total of $120,000 annually to the institutions for three years, so each could give up to eight bursaries or cash awards of $3,000 to needy students every year. The association leaves the selection and definition of 'needy students' to the individual universities. SMU, for example, defines them as 'students whose per capita household income is under $1,900'.
The Fund's chairman, Mr Ko Oon Joo, 62, told The Straits Times: 'We just wanted to do more'. He will announce the increase in the fund's amount and the association's plans to benefit more needy Singapore students at Leong Khay's 77th anniversary dinner on Saturday. He noted that more than 60 students have benefited since the fund was started three years ago.
The new agreements would allow each of the universities to give out 12 instead of eight awards every year, and the quantum of the awards would also be increased. More than 40 students who benefited from the fund met Leong Khay clan leaders for the first time last month, at an ice cream parlour at Gillman Barracks. 'We intend to encourage them to be volunteers at our association, and to find out from them how else we can help students like them,' Mr Ko Oen Tjiang, Leong Khay chairman, said.
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