Cantonese restaurant group Royal China has donated over £12,000 from proceeds raised from selling Year of the Ox food boxes during Lunar New Year to raise money for Goldsmiths students in need of financial support.
The idea for this fundraising initiative came from Lin Zhang, Goldsmiths alumna from the Institute of Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship.
Miss Zhang told us, “I received an email from Goldsmiths as an alumna about their Student Support Fund and suggested the idea of fundraising for this cause to Ms Lam, the CEO of Royal China.”
Ms Yick Kwan Yeung-Lam, Chief Executive, was immediately interested in the idea:
“We want to donate to Goldsmiths students because they have an exceptional reputation for arts and humanities subjects and we believe in the value of arts and humanities subjects. We are also very keen to support students who have lost a lot of part-time job opportunities because of Covid-19, especially students from ethnic minorities.”
“This is our first time doing a Lunar New Year fundraising event for students,” Ms Lam went on to say. “We contributed to Wuhan hospitals this time last year when Covid-19 started in China, and we donated masks to the NHS. Our staff there worked endlessly to provide free meals for frontline workers. This time around, we wanted to support and help students in hardship.”
“This time around, we wanted to support and help students in hardship.”
More than 1,000 boxes were sold within three weeks raising a total of £12,571. The Royal China Group covered all the costs of the boxes so 100% of the proceeds could be used to support students. All proceeds have been donated to the Student Support Fund to support students facing extraordinary financial and emotional challenges during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
The funds raised by the Royal China Group were put to immediate use to help launch the Alumni supported Covid-19 Student Hardship Fund – a time-limited fund for students facing hardship arising from the Covid-19 pandemic, to support their continuation of study and successful outcomes. Vulnerable or disabled students received urgently needed financial support with housing costs, living costs, specialist equipment, or assistive technology.
Alison Woolley, Director of Development and Alumni Relations expressed her thanks, “We are so grateful to Ms Lam and all the employees of the Royal China Group who gave up their time to dedicate to this unique fundraising initiative. It is heart-warming to see such overwhelming support for students during the most difficult year in higher education in my memory.”
