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SCMP Reporter

Top charity's projects were object lessons  in what not to do
I refer to your report and editorial ('Few charities welcome public scrutiny', and 'Better rules for charities needed to foster giving', October 4).
I would like to  share with your readers my  experience and views both as a donor and as a founder of a charity.
In my mid-70s and    physically fit, I decided to try to  help the less fortunate as best I could.
A donation was made to one of the world's best-known charitable organisations, which was building schools in the poorest regions of China.
I had high hopes of learning from this charity.  To my great disappointment, what I and like-minded people did learn was what not to do.  
Blueprints drawn up and submitted by reputable architects, were totally ignored. Project management was ineffective and a big part of the funds was wasted on non-essential  items.
The student count was only half of the original proposed and none of the promised monitoring was in place. When we tried, in a constructive way, to  pass on our concerns to their headquarters,  we were not even given the courtesy of a reply but threatened  with legal action if we did not stop voicing our grievances on the Web. This was a painful, yet valuable lesson.
I decided there and then to set up my own trust and do a better job.  To alleviate the common worries donors have about administration costs, I adopted the simple methodology of  splitting costs from donations.
All administration costs are absorbed through my personal endowment specially set up for funding the Studer Trust, so  100 per cent of donations reach the needy.
We have  closely monitored our efficiency and managed to stay trim, with an administrative- expenditure-to-donation ratio of  22 per cent (taking into consideration that some of our senior team members work on a voluntary basis from home, plus minimal fund-raising costs). We serve as a bridge between those who are willing to help and those who are less fortunate. I motivate friends and volunteers with similar views and values to contribute time and money to the trust.  
We do not just spend the donations as charity giveaways but we try to capitalise on them. We see them as our assets and we constantly monitor them to make sure they are sustainable.  
We are continually trying to achieve our best.   
I fully support the idea of an independent organisation similar to the BBB Wise Giving Alliance. It is  a positive step towards maintaining charity accountability standards in Hong Kong.
However, the Hong Kong Council of Social Service   needs to do a lot more proactively  to promote and convince the public to use its Wise Giving database as the common platform for exchanging information. Before I read your editorial, I had not heard of this database. 
We did not 'decline' their invitation to publish our accounts on their website, because we were not aware of the database. I look forward to seeing the participation rate rise from 2.5 per cent to a more substantial figure. 
Peter Gautschi, Studer Trust
So many worthy candidates ignored
I have always been sceptical about the Nobel Prize nominations.  
If the Nobel Foundation was under pressure to give  an award to US President Barack Obama, they could have given him economics, rather than the peace prize. That would at least stick. Mr Obama has been successful in getting the world out of the greatest recession in record time by printing and distributing tonnes of money.  
Worthy candidates for the peace prize in the past would have been the likes of  Margaret Thatcher, Deng  Xiaoping , Chris Patten or Tung Chee-hwa,  for overseeing the  peaceful  handover of Hong Kong. This happened even though there were some in the world  anticipating the worst of outcomes.
Or they could have given it to that forgotten United Nations inspector who single-handedly roared into the faces of the warmongers  that  there was no evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It should be noted that Mahatma Gandhi was never given the award. 
I think the founder of the prizes, Alfred Nobel, must be turning in his grave when he sees the indiscriminate way in which the prizes are awarded. 
Lal Daswani, Tsim Sha Tsui
Freedom of speech eroded yet again
I refer to the report ('Activists threaten police with legal action over protest clash', October 5). 
As one of the activists 'kettled' in and obstructed by officers during the National Day  protests, I  sympathise with the comments of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China.  
Unfortunately, it is not unusual for local demonstrations to descend into farce, with anger  redirected towards police and our original message  lost in the ensuing chaos. A cynic would suggest this is the desired outcome of the authorities, as it would seem provocative to try to  funnel hundreds of peaceful protesters into single file as we approached the central government's liaison office in Western. 
The truest patriots were not those watching CCTV on October 1, but the 600 people challenging their government on the streets. Yet it was shameful to see how freedom of speech in Hong Kong was eroded yet again.
Tom Grundy, Ho Man Tin
Placard got it right
In the midst of delivering his policy address on Wednesday, Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen pointed out a grammatical error on placards held up by the pan-democrats ('Pan-democrats' little placard joke lost in a grammatical blind alley', October 15). The legislators' slogan was: 'Bow tie, keep your election promise.'
'Keep' in this sentence is used in the imperative mood to follow the second person 'you', and there is nothing wrong with the grammar, as was later pointed out by a legislator.  
Perhaps members of the public fail to appreciate  Mr Tsang's sense of humour in wishing that  the slogan could be rectified in his favour.  
Peter Wei, Kwun Tong
Pointless detour
I refer to the report ('Busy bus roundabout angers residents', October 11).  Chung Hom Kok residents are complaining about buses making a detour off the main road, and going down and then up their street.
I live in Wan Chai but take the 6X frequently. I had always thought it was the residents  who had demanded this detour and that it was quite selfish as it caused everyone else on the route to take the nauseating detour when hardly anyone got on or off.
Now I realise the residents  don't even like it. It is extremely wasteful to have a portion of a bus route that neither the passengers nor local residents want. 
If there are 40 people on the bus and the detour takes three minutes, that's a collective waste of two hours per trip, to say nothing of the wasted fuel, and the wear and tear on the bus from  the steep route. I hope for the sake of regular commuters that this detour can be eliminated. 
Andrew Enthoven, Wan Chai




Letters