This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on January 11, 2021 - January 17, 2021
GROWING up in the small town of Pusing in rural Perak, Sunway Group chairman Tan Sri Dr Jeffrey Cheah had many childhood friends whose futures were bleak because they could not afford schooling.
“The poverty and hardships that surrounded me formed my conviction that education provides the best route out of poverty and misery,” says Cheah in an interview with The Edge.
Those early impressions prompted him to set up the Jeffrey Cheah Foundation (JCF), which aims “to create a better, sustainable future for all Malaysians, particularly through quality education and research”.
The foundation completed its first decade last year, having awarded close to RM540 million in scholarships and grants.
“We target to have the endowment fund exceed RM1 billion within the next 10 years. This would also enable the foundation to establish professorial chairs at Sunway University in perpetuity,” says Cheah.
An accountant by training, his success story mirrors Malaysia’s growth. Cheah established the Sunway Group in 1974, starting with tin mining, then building the group into one of the nation’s largest conglomerates, with core interests in real estate and construction. Today, its 13 business divisions employ 16,000 people in 50 locations worldwide.
In keeping with Cheah’s aspiration to serve society, he has endowed the foundation with all 16 educational institutions and entities under the Sunway Education Group — the nation’s largest education-focused social enterprise.
Aiming to drive nation-building through education, he hopes that Sunway University can eventually rank among the top 100 universities globally and be the education hub of the East.
“My long-term ambition is to make Sunway University the Harvard or Cambridge of the East,” he says.
“I am aware this is unlikely to be realised overnight, perhaps not even in my lifetime, but what I am doing is setting the foundation stones for the future. Slowly, but surely, we will get there,” says Cheah.
Towards that end, the foundation has forged partnerships with world renowned universities including Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, University of California, Berkeley, and MIT in Boston. It also hopes to work with leading Asian universities soon.
Cheah’s sense of social mission is a guiding principle for his business.
“I believe that each of us should have a higher purpose in life. In my case, that purpose is to give back to society in a meaningful and impactful way and to encourage others to do so as well. My personal motto is, ‘I aspire to inspire before I expire’,” he says.
Moved by a patriotic spirit, he feels privileged to be in a position to contribute towards nation-building through sustainable development, always telling his wealthy friends to give back to society as much as possible.
“The three values that I hold very dearly are also our Sunway’s core values, namely Integrity, Humility and Excellence,” he says.
It took humility to court the world’s leading universities for the sake of Malaysia’s future, he points out.
“It was not easy to convince these international institutions to collaborate with us. They are never short of suitors.”
However, the outcomes are promising for Cheah’s dream, with an impressive list of partnerships in the bag or taking shape. The major ventures are:
• The Southeast Asia Leadership (SEAL) programme, conducted annually since 2016 by Sunway University and Sunway Medical Centre in partnership with Harvard Medical School.
• A Clinical Research Centre at Sunway City Kuala Lumpur, jointly established by Sunway Medical Centre and the University of Cambridge.
• Sunway Medical Centre will work with the University of Cambridge’s health partners, the Royal Papworth and Addenbrooke’s hospitals. A medical school is planned in collaboration with University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine. The foundation is also in discussion with Harvard Medical School on relocating Harvard University’s Global Health Delivery Centre from Dubai to Sunway City Kuala Lumpur.
• In collaboration with the University of Cambridge, the Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre has been set up on the University of Cambridge bio-medical campus, which is the largest biotech cluster outside the US. The Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre houses over 150 scientists and clinicians at the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease (CITIID), leading the University of Cambridge’s response against the Covid-19 pandemic.
• The foundation is in collaboration with MIT to have its professors teach material science and school of engineering students at Sunway University. It is also discussing the possibility of setting up a school of engineering in Sunway University.
• Sunway University has entered into a partnership with MIT to set up a carbon capture research project at Sunway City Kuala Lumpur, with equal sharing of revenues from potential commercialisation.
• The Sunway-Lancaster partnership, ongoing for 15 years, delivers a range of undergraduate dual-degree courses at the Sunway campus in Kuala Lumpur. The degree courses are validated by Lancaster University, which is ranked among the top 10 UK universities and ranked as “University of the Year” by Times Higher Education.
• The Sunway-Lancaster Future Cities Research Institute (FCRI) has been launched with an initial investment of over RM50 million to bring some of the world’s leading scholars together.
• The foundation also brought in Monash University Malaysia, a top Australian institution, more than 20 years ago, located in Sunway City Kuala Lumpur.
Locally, Director-General of Health Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah, was recently appointed as Malaysia’s first Jeffrey Cheah Honorary Professor of Medicine at Sunway University.
To ensure the sustainability of foundations like JCF, says Cheah, a reform of the income tax regime is necessary.
“We are currently liaising with the government on how the existing rules governing charities limit the scope of the foundation’s efforts to ensure its long-term future,” he says.
“Under current law, the foundation is required to disburse at least 50% of its funds received in the following year. This is very different from the rules in many other countries such as the US, and even Singapore. In these countries, institutions that are allowed to receive donations can set them aside for investment or to be placed in fixed deposit accounts,” Cheah points out.
To encourage philanthropy for nation-building, he says, the authorities need to look beyond the immediate goal of increasing tax receipts. He hopes that the foundation will be successful in its advocacy efforts.
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