Giving Back to St Joe - The Handover

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Here's some quick photos from the donation handover and walkabout at St Joe this morning ... This is just to satisfy the impatient who are asking for the blog to be updated 30 seconds after the event. LOL

Anyway I'll be posting more stuff later today or tomorrow ...

We donated student desks and chairs,and teacher tables for 3 classrooms, plus a projector. The picture above shows the projector being handed over, in the presence of eight representatives from the Class of 1976. We also had a reporter from the Borneo Post in attendance.

Principal Mr Thomas Lau then brought us to each of the classes with new furniture and we spoke to the teacher and students.

We shook the hands of each and every student ...

Here we are in another classroom with the Prinicipal and one of the teachers, Ms Sandy Wong.

Of course, we had to test out the desks and chairs for ourselves ....

A shot outside the classes ...

And a final shot with the Old Boys Block in the background ..

Here's a BEFORE and AFTER look at one of the classrooms ...

This was a small but meaningful project. In a way, this is a project reflecting our three HOPEs. We hope our contribution of desks, chairs, tables and projector will make a small but positive difference to the learning environment of St Joe. We hope that other former students will also band together to make similar (hopefully BIGGER) contributions to their alma mater. Finally we hope that the government may also take note and lend us further support in this effort to boost the quality of education for Sarawak.


Item in Borneo Post (16 Sep 2010)

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Giving Back to St Joe

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Bottomline: Pledges Needed
We've been discussing ways of giving back to St Joe for a while. Based on discussions that Bob Chew and I have had with the Principal and our review of various possible needs suggested, we propose a one-time sponsorship of new desks for students and teachers for 3 classrooms. This will impact 6 classes since these classes are used by morning and afternoon students.Total cost for this is around RM 8,500. I propose we aim for the auspicious figure of RM 8,888.

We currently have RM 5,000 left from our Grand Reunion funds. We need a further RM 3,888 and hope that you will agree that this is a meaningful way we can make a small contribution to our alma mater. We therefore hope you will be generous and pledge an amount (as small or as large as you like) towards making up this figure. Just make your pledge in the comments. We'll figure out the collection process later. We hope to be able to present our contribution to the Principal by July 2010.

Here's the latest status (updated daily):
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Details now follow ...
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Background
A few weeks ago, Bob and I called on St Joe's principal Mr Thomas Lau to explore some meaningful ways we could contribute to the continuing education of the new generation. We had an interesting chat and Mr Lau and assistant Raymond brought us on a little tour of the school grounds. You've already seen photos of the Library. Here are some shots from our old classrooms in the Old Boys Block.

Photo 1: One of the classes we studied in back in 1975 and 1976

Photo 2: Another view of the same class

Photo 3: Mr Lau shows the condition of the desks and chairs

Photo 4: The next classroom

Photo 5: Bob trying to show us he still remembers his Add Maths formulae

In deciding what form our donation takes, we are guided by the following principles:
(a)  the donation will be for something that helps in the education of the students,
(b)  it will be a once-off donation, rather than extended over a period which may be hard to manage,
(c)  it should be something that a sizeable number of students will actually make use of

After listening to the Principal on possible areas that would benefit from sponsorship, we have decided on sponsoring new desks for three classrooms (our old ones in 1976), namely
old 5Sc - now 2H and 5H
old 5A1 - now 2G and 5I
old 5A2 - now 2F and 4E

Student desks (103 units @ RM 68 each) = RM 7,004

Teacher's table (3 units @ RM 500 each) = RM 1,500

Other expenses for future repairs (and rounding up to an auspicious number :) = RM 384
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Total needed = RM 8,888
 
We currently have RM 5,000 left from the Grand Reunion. So to top that up, I'd like to ask if any of the boys of 1976 would be willing to pledge some more (up to RM3,888) to bring this figure to an auspicious RM 8,888.
 
Just enter your pledge (your name and amount pledged) as a comment to this posting. We'll figure out how to collect the money from you later.  I'll also put up a running count of how much we have collected, updated daily. I'm sure I can count on your generosity. Thanks in advance.
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