The Lions Club Kuching North (LCKN) and The Sarawak Initiatives (TSI), a local Civil Society working towards building a better Sarawak, are working in collaboration to provide financial aid in the form of a bursary to bright students facing financial difficulty. The bursary will help the students to pay for their monthly education materials and pocket money to get them by throughout their secondary schooling years.
TSI will work with LCKN to find ways to help bright students who are financially constrained to complete their tertiary education as well. TSI believes no students be allowed to face any financial difficulties when pursuing a good education for a bright future.
This is the first education project undertaken and TSI will continue to do more for deserving students from other parts of Sarawak including the rural schools. TSI will also organize student counselling sessions and talks on career paths and the various academic courses students may wish to learn more before embarking onto a tertiary education.
The welfare of the community is a major focus of Lions Club International and LCKN has 2 signature projects in the form of Diabetic and Sight First Projects for many years. LCKN started the “Adopt a Student” project in 2019 to give financial aid and opportunities to bright students coming from disadvantaged background to enable them to achieve their full potential.
Under this project, students will be given active mentoring by the coordinator. The financial aid is disbursed once every 2 months and the recipients have to account for their spending by keeping a record of it. In that way, they are taught integrity, responsibility and the skill of managing their finances.
The collaboration between LCKN and TSI came into reality when the immediate past president of LCKN, Connie Yeo suggested both LCKN and TSI work together to achieve this common objective.
Thus, by early 2020, the first recipient of this project, Brenda Kueh, a Form 4 student was identified and adopted. Brenda comes from a mixed marriage of Iban-Chinese family. She is hardworking and doing well in her studies.