A taxing time for Jennie Chua and the ComChest, which aims to raise $52m
By
Wong Kim Hoh, Senior Writer
ComChest chairman Jennie Chua is hopeful that ordinary Singaporeans will help the organisation meet its fundraising target despite the financial crisis. Singaporeans, she says, "watch their own economic circumstances but within their own ability to give, they give generous". -- ST PHOTO: ALAN LIM
NOTHING pleases Ms Jennie Chua more than being asked if she is 'still' the chairman of the Community Chest.
The question means she has done a good job of letting the organisation's work speak for itself.
ON THE SELFLESS UNSUNG
'I help to raise money. But people who give of their time to feed, clean, wash, counsel and hold the hands of people in homes are more selfless. You don't even know them - they are the unsung, I am sung.'
MS JENNIE Chua, 63, is the president and CEO of The Ascott Group, which operates an international chain of serviced apartments.
Prior to that, the hospitality graduate from Cornell University in New York was known as the 'empress dowager' of Raffles Hotel. As CEO and president of Raffles Holdings, she oversaw an empire with more than 9,000 employees and scores of premium hotels spanning 30 countries.
'I do not believe that a charity should be tied to a face or a person,' says the 63-year-old, who has chaired the non-profit organisation since 2000 and helped it raise nearly $400 million in the past eight years.
The ComChest, which is the fundraising arm of the National Council of Social Service (NCSS), was set up in 1983 to centralise fundraising and allow voluntary welfare organisations (VWOs) to focus on providing social services for children, families, the old and the disabled here.
'It's more important for Singaporeans to understand the ComChest, love it and believe in it because of what it does or stands for, not the people associated with it. People will and must move on. When they do, do you start all over again?'
Not that the consummate power-broker - who has a personal line to the who's who of Singapore and who sits on more than a dozen corporate boards - is hanging up her fundraiser's hat any time soon.
Under the current debilitating economic climate, her connections and her famous powers of persuasion are being taxed, trying to meet ComChest's target of $52 million this financial year ending in March. The amount is needed to fund nearly 150 social service programmes by more than 50 VWOs to help some 340,000 people here.
So far, the organisation has collected about $30 million. It has three more months to raise the shortfall of $22 million. Last year, up till November, $25.4 million was raised.
Read the full story in today's edition of The Straits Times.
