Related Articles

Class of 1985 donates to the School – interviewing with 85ers

Thanks to the donation by the Class of 85, this year the school installed new drinking machines at two locations, and enhanced the lighting system at the Chapel.

This is a great example of a group of old boys getting together, each giving what he is comfortable with, to help our alma mater and make a difference.

We had the pleasure to interview a few Old Boys from the Class of 1985 who coordinated this donation initiative.

1)

Instead of making lump sum cash donations, your class is sponsoring specific improvements to the campus. What brings you guys to this idea?

In support of the fundraising projects for the 90th Anniversary, the Class of 1985 has been running a fundraising campaign for a few months. With the support of many 85ers, we managed to raise enough funds to endorse the renovation project of the Geography Room. We are fortunate to have additional funds after taking up the project to look for other ways of supporting our beloved Alma Mater.

Prior to these drinking machines, the Class of 1985 also donated the “Timer” which is now placed prominently facing the track a few years ago. While we appreciated all kinds of support given by old boys to the School which should be considered equally important, we also wanted to donate something meaningful and functional to the Alma Mater and the stakeholders. These water machines, together with the Timer as mentioned and the Chapel lights we donated two months ago, are believed to be meeting the purpose of serving stakeholders of the School including brothers, students, old boys and parents, etc. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all 85ers to make this happen.

Roger Lee 85

2)

Why does your class opt to donate and manage actual improvement projects for the school, rather than just donate a lump sum?

Response: From time to time when working on different school activities initiatives, we notice certain needs of our students, or the school as a whole. We will then discuss some possible improvement ideas among our classmates, and get some high level quotes, so as to gauge whether we can afford a proposed solution. We would then approach the school and sound out the idea to see if there is interest.

This way certainly takes much more time and effort than just handing over a cheque, but the fact that we know we are addressing some specific needs of the school, that to us is more meaningful than just donating a sum of money. Our classmates are also more engaged and interested to find out what their donations have gone to support, and seeing something tangible and functional done for our alma mater is rewarding to all our donor classmates.

What is an interesting story of such projects you can share?

Response: When our class proposed a large digital clock to be installed for the sports field in 2015, we had to work closely with Bro. Steve who was personally very keen on the project. He was very involved in the specification, the location to install the clock, even down to the size and color of the digits. No one had installed a digital clock in the school sports field before, and I remember we had to discuss repeatedly to decide whether the clock digits should be 18 inches, 24 inches or 36 inches tall, so that the clock can be clearly read from the far end of the school campus (in the end 24 inches high digits were chosen).

It was a very interesting yet time consuming project to work with Bro Steve and the supplier, and we are very pleased that the outcome is a welcomed addition to everyone in school.

Mark Huang 85

3)

If a fellow old boy would like to follow your steps and sponsor a specific improvement project, what would be your advice to him? What is the first step to take?

Talk to La Salle Foundation.

La Salle Foundation already has a database compiled that list the projects that required funding. Donating cash directly to the cause of these projects is the most direct and helpful way to assist the school.
In this year’s donation, in addition to donating the water machines and revamping the lighting system in school Chapel, Class of 85 have also donated 250k in cash to the school to renovate Geography Room.

As for the extra projects, talk to the school.

End user requirement is always priority number one. During the course of our drinking water project, we are grateful we received a lot of assistance from the staff of LSC. We are particularly grateful to Principal Mr W.S. Tong , Vice Principal Mr Steve Leung & Mr Silas Fong for giving us many valuable insights in what the college really needs.

We did spent quite a lot of time researching for the latest water filtration technology available on the market. And a lot of time is used to negotiate with manufacturers and vendors across the globe to search for a product that is both well built, dependable , safe to use, easy to maintain , and affordable at the same time.

We are quite happy with the final product we come up with this time. The water machines installed in our school now employs some of the latest nano-class water filtration technology available on the market today. The pore size of the water filters are only 0.0001 micron in size and according to the US Center of Disease Control, this kind of water filtration system is highly effective in removing bacteria, viruses, heavy metal and chemical contaminants from the water source, making safe drinking water that meets the international drinking water standard of ANSI 53.

We do encourage all old boys to help out the school in whatever way we can.
We happened to be quite experienced in procurement and negotiating difficult business deals and that kind of give us an advantage in making these extra projects succeed.
But may we remind everyone our primary focus should remain as cash donations to La Salle Foundation. Directly supporting our school in cash is still the best way to help our Alma Mater.

Anthony Lam 85

Talk to us. Try to keep the numbers low for maintenance. Probably get better price …

Dwight Chan 85

4)

Just out of curiosity, who had the first sip from the new drinking machine?

Dwight Chan 85 , LSC teacher Mr Silas Fong and myself are the first one on spot to inspect the installation of the first drinking water machine.
We are the first one to push the button to check if the machine is working properly. But we did NOT have a sip of the water produced by this machine. We are too occupied with fine tuning the water flow , water temperature , & safety improvements at the time and we don’t have a chance to take a sip of water ourselves.
The machine is installed a day before Torch Relay on purpose, so whoever joins Torch Relay and was there to try out the water machine, you are the first one to get a sip!

Anthony Lam 85