5. Donating to Student-centered Activities

These are new activities.  I have my reason for donating to this type of activities.  In our university environment, it is not difficult to find guidance from professors on what are good and suitable for students.   To counter this trend, I would like to encourage and reward student-centered activities where students suggest, plan, and guide their own activities.

I first come across such activity when in the early 2000 I donated directly to the student debating club to help them start in NTU an Inter-tertiary series of debates.    I asked them to call it Dorothy Cheung Series of Debates to remember Dorothy who personally helped engineering students to start debate in the early 1980s.  I donated once more directly to them.  In subsequent years they faithfully continued the Dorothy Cheung title as the series was already established even among neighboring countries.

This student club was so active that they started in NTU their own series of Model UN, inviting international participation, and holding them at the NTU Executive Centre, normally booked for events held by professional organisations.

I think these two are good examples of student-centered activities. and was gong to add to their donations. Donations to the former come easily under Dorothy Cheung Memorial Fund. For Model UN events the student Committee to giving an Award to the best speaker and calling this Dorothy Cheung Award.

This was when the NTU Admin. stepped in to give these supports proper financial control.  These Admin Depts are the Student Affairs Office (SAO) and the earlier mentioned Development Office (DO).  The SAO give subsidies to these student clubs based on their budgets and on how worthy are their activities. They welcome additional external donations like mine.  All external donations are first channeled though the DO which issue rules and regulation on their administration.

I then continue to look for good existing student-centered activity.  I found one called TEDx-NTU.  They had a success conference in 2012 called "the pursuit of Happiness".  I was glad to donate to give them greater encouragement.  

[to be continued, last update 1 Oct, 2013]