Chinese book donations benefit over a quarter of primary schools here

The Chou Sing Chu Foundation (CSCF) School Library Sponsorship Programme crossed a milestone with its recent sponsorship of 20 primary schools.

Over the past three years, the CSCF, a non-profit organisation that promotes Chinese culture, education and language, has lent its support to more than a quarter of primary schools in Singapore.

Its School Library Sponsorship Programme aims to nurture a love for the Chinese language at an early age and establish a strong foundation for learning through donations of Chinese language books to select primary schools.

The sponsored schools are selected based on factors such as their existing library collection, current activities promoting the Chinese language and future plans.

Launched in 2018, the programme originally intended to sponsor 10 primary schools annually, but this number doubled in subsequent years owing to enthusiastic responses from schools.

With this year's additions - selected from a pool of 58 applicants - the programme has, to date, supplied more than 40,000 books to 50 primary schools. There are 186 primary schools in Singapore.

CSCF founder and chairman Chou Cheng Ngok outlined an even bigger goal.

"Although the school library sponsorship programme has supported 50 schools within the span of three years, our goal is to ultimately benefit 100 primary schools in Singapore," he said.

Principals and vice-principals representing the 20 schools joined Mr Chou at the NTUC Centre last Friday to sign and receive letters of sponsorship acknowledgement.

One of them, Pei Chun Public School's principal Lim Meng Wei, said that "with this community partnership, the school is able to circulate more Chinese books among our students and cultivate their interest in reading a broader genre of books". "This initiative greatly enhances the school's reading programme, cultivates lifelong reading habits in our students, and in turn nurtures their love for the Chinese language," he added.