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Elizabeth Turner

IVEY EMBA

FOUR ALUMNI OF the Richard Ivey School of Business made an arduous two-day journey late last year with Ivey Asia associate dean Kathleen Slaughter to the remote Chinese village of Mangde, in Yunnan province. The purpose of the trip was to officially open a new school and meet the students and teachers.

The school was built with funds raised by the Ivey EMBA class of 2004. The three-storey building has facilities to teach up to 240 children from pre-kindergarten to elementary levels.

The school also has a new, big dormitory for the more than 60 children who board on weekdays because their homes are more than an hour's walk away.

Until the Ivey students stepped in, pupils attended classes in a small, damp, rundown building with a leaky roof. The dormitory was so overcrowded that boarding children had to climb over each other to get into bed.

In the wake of corporate scandals that have hit the headlines in recent years, many business schools are placing greater emphasis on corporate responsibility and ethical business practices.

The Richard Ivey Business School's motto is 'to develop outstanding business leaders who think globally, act strategically and contribute to the societies in which they operate'.

As well as covering such ethics in the classroom, Ivey encourages its students to contribute beyond the realms of their professions directly to the communities in which they operate.

The EMBA class of 2004 picked up a charity initiative started by an earlier class, setting up a fund-raising committee to oversee activities. By the end of the first year, the class had organised a charity dinner and raised $85,000. A charity walk brought the total  to $174,000.

Sowers Action, a Hong Kong-based organisation that aims to give children in China access to basic education, was chosen as the recipient of the money.

The Ivey class was impressed with the charity's objectives and the transparency with which donations were spent.

One of the students, Kammy Yuen, had worked as a volunteer for Sowers. She persuaded the class that the funds would be put to good use.

The extra time demanded of students to raise funds in between juggling work, study and family turned out to be the link that pulled the class through their second year.

Benson Pau, who sat on the fund-raising committee, said the students began to lose momentum by the end of the first year as other commitments took their toll.

However, impetus picked up when the group learned that the dinner had raised almost half the amount needed to build a new school.

'We all say we are very busy, but we are very elastic and can expand,' Ms Yuen said.

'Our boundaries are limited only by our imagination. None of us was experienced at raising funds and we started at zero ... after that, I feel my capacity has increased.'

Mr Pau, who owns his own furniture export company, said the experience had been invaluable,  and the important thing was to help society. 'I think we all feel that the children in China are the future.'

He said the experience had enriched his life more than his studies.

'The happiness I feel to help people  cannot be measured by the value of the dollar,' he said.

The school visit has inspired alumni members to continue raising funds to build another dormitory and to provide materials such as books and stationery.



Gift of a school enriches lives of student donors