A 'perpetual' Scholarship Trust out of Death March
Published on: Sunday, May 28, 2017
By Kan Yaw Chong
LAST Sunday, we kept the "masterminds" behind a beneficent Death March-inspired million ringgit Scholarship Trust a "mystery".Now we disclose they are none other than ex-teacher-turned-war historian Lynette Silver and ex-banker husband Neil Silver, and indirectly in the distant beginning, Pastor Moses Chin.ADVERTISEMENT After 12 years in operation, the Trust has accumulated more than a million ringgit and so it can basically live perpetually on a premium interest rate and still growing!But it's an untold story because the duo had steadfastly declined publicity about it since its inception in 2006 dedicated to raise up talented Dusun girls whose fathers earned less than RM500 in disposable income per year. But the time has come to talk, after three out of dozens of girls picked to study at St Michael's Sandakan, were flown to a maiden eyebrow raising windfall trip to Australia early May. The well thought out Scholarship Trust is about raising the all-important money to educate abjectly poor Dusun girls though secondary school and then provides grants to establish a start at university, if necessary. ADVERTISEMENT So it's beneficent and futuristic. But a key criteria of selection is the individual beneficiaries must be Dusun and the father must earn less than RM500 in disposable income per year.
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Those criteria are sure to raise wonder why only Dusun girls are eligible, of which Lynette explains in this report. Believe it or not, all the money had been raised by motivational talks alone. The magic million money spinner is none other than glib talking Lynette who travelled across Australia to speak about the Death March in Sabah over the last 12 years. Stirred and moved by a tragedy that killed 99.7pc of the 1,793 incarcerated Aussie prisoners of war (whereas all 641 British POWs died) in a then no man's land Sabah, the pathos of the tragic story moved countless Aussie hearts to pour out the cash for the couple's cause. She said: "I'll go home and I'll get an envelope come to the mail, and see: 'I was at the talk, here's A$1,000'!" she recounted a pleasant response. Generous Aussies respond "So people were very, very generous and once the money started going from petty cash to something big, that's when I needed my banker husband Neil to take over so he can set up all the financial side of the Special Trust Account and the Trust which all had to be legally done, making sure the books are kept, paying people, sending the money, liasing with church (St Michael's Sandakan which operates the hostel which houses the scholarship girls funded by the Trust) each year on how much they need," Lynette said. "That part is all beyond me, I stir people up, Neil makes sure it work," quipped Lynette.But it is sure people will start imagining they used this million ringgit Scholarship Trust money to send the three girls to Australia. That's untrue.The truth is, well-to-do ex-students of Sydney's Barker College pays A o Z to fly the three girls out, eg. Singapore Airlines airfare, tuition, accommodation, food, besides gifts in kind by a slew of well-wishers.The outcome of a 'doer' Actually this story had not been easy to write because although Daily Express had interviewed Lynette for years, we knew very little fine details of the Scholarship Trust because they talked very little about it. But when this eye-brow raising trip came along, it's appropriate time to probe and highlight an iconic beneficence. So the inevitable question: What started it all – the three girls' all-expenses paid educational trip to Australia?Lynette said: "The idea started in 2005 after we unveiled the stain glass windows of remembrance at St Michael's Anglican Church, Sandakan, and the windows which were a tribute to the local Dusun people who helped the Prisoners of War."After we had unveiled them, and all the excitement had died down, I went back with Neil and Moses Chin, who was the Minister of Church, to look at the windows for one last time. As we stood on the steps looking at them I just said to Moses, they are very beautiful aren't they but they don't actually do anything!"That 'do' remark marked the start to it all. Without such individuals well-honed on a time-honoured value of action, there is no Scholarship Trust, no girls going to Australia. At the remark, Pastor Moses Chin then grabbed the opportunity the single item do list:"Okay, if you want to 'do something', you can help us with a project to educate very talented but very poor, underprivileged Dusun girls from the interior!" Lynette remembered what he said. So a word is a word. Repaying the Dusuns for 'a very big thing' they had done The driving inspiration was that piece of criteria – "Dusuns who needed help" – struck Lynette with a rush of reminders of the hey days of the 1945 Death March when Aussie POWs in dire circumstance needed saviours and guess what – the Dusuns did exactly that – saved six survivors, she said. "I recognised doing something to help the Dusun people today is to say thank you to the Dusun people of yesteryears, what they did back in 1945," she reflected."It was the Dusun people alone who took in the prisoners of war, fed them something like five weeks in the villages knowing full well if the Japanese officers found out, the whole villagers would be killed! "So this was a very big thing to do. And to remember that they had no allegiance to the Australians, no allegiance to us at all, and yet they took in strangers and they did what was a very Christian thing to do but basically no one had ever recognised what they had done," Lynette explained the background drivers that fuelled the birth of the Scholarship Trust. "As I went across Australia to speak, I would tell the story of Sandakan and what happened down here and I reminded everybody that the only reason that we know what happened in Sandakan and the Death March is because six people survived and why do they survive? "Because the Dusun people took them in and we can see these girls from the villages had no hope for the future unless they are educated and what a waste of potential talents purely because of their financial situationsDusun people the only reason behind sole six Aussie POWs survived For example, it was Bariga, a Ranau Dusun who hid and fed Keith Botteril, Nelson Short and Bill Moxhem plus Anderson (who died) in an isolated ravine and Ranau padi farmer Godihil who sheltered Warrant Officer Stipevich and headman Abing bin Luma who found Dick Braithwaite helped by BS Willie, Galuty Lap who found Owen Campbell while famous chief of Death March track cutters, Panglima Kulang, took Campbell to safety – all of whom were Dusun people, noted Lynette. "So, I asked Pastor Moses Chin: What do you need? He said: 'Oh, we need some money. If you could just help contribute it would be good'."That said, it became a deal.Lynette and Neil would look for the money, St Michael's Church would look for the deserving primary school graduates through their local priests. The Church set up a panel of picks to go to remote villages for deserving secondary education scholarship candidates who live in quite remote small villages mostly on rivers such as Kinabatangan, Sugut and lives long way out."In one selection time, selectors navigated 16 hours from Sandakan via cars, across swing bridges, boats, walking – clearly there is no way in which girls who are 16 hours from Sandakan have a chance to go to high school," Lynette said.Selection criteria: Father earns less than RM500 in disposable cash per year The criteria set in 2005 is they must be Dusun, they must live too far away from high school to be able to go to school, they must be girls, their father must earn less than RM500 in disposable income a year and when they meet all that criteria they are brought to St Michael School hostel in the church ground which can take 16 because that's the upper accommodation limit."Trust pays for education and welfare The Trust fund on the other hand finances one-third of the operational costs of running the hostel and education the 16 girls in a hostel environment , – electricity, books, a house mother who stays with them all the time, said Lynette."We bought them five computers when we discovered that they were doing their studies, they had no computers and when we discovered that because of the humidity, the computers were breaking down and so we partitioned part of the hostel and air conditioned it," she said."In other words, the Trust Fund provides two things – education and their wellbeing," Lynette said."So if they needed a new fridge – an obvious aspect of wellbeing, food, the old bathroom was just a concrete room with plastic tub and we did a properly tiled room, and recently a washing machine, we pay for that sort of things because we got to do welfare. Anything outside that can't come from the Trust," she explained. Stressful hand to month start but cash flow climbed after 3 years "So I went back home to Australia, I was invited to give public speaking and I decided I wouldn't take any fee for speaking – no petrol money, no gifts, no bunches of flowers, no bottles of wine, nothing, but I would say: I don't want anything for coming to speak, but I want to bring my wishing bags. And my wishing bag is a very brightly covered bag and after my talk I would tell them that we have these wonderful Dusun people during the war and now it would be very nice for Australians to say 'thank you' for what happened all those years ago," she said."Well, the people that came started to give quite a lot of money.""For the first three years we had 16 girls on the programme, we had to raise quite a lot and it was quite a bit of hand-to-mouth existence. Neil opened a special bank account because we started to accumulate some funds. "I was always worried, as the girls were, that if the funds dried up their schooling would finish or the donations dried up which then could mean although they started at school they would not be able to finish. "So it was quite stressful wondering if you would get enough money to keep it going for the next year," Lynette recalled the first three challenging years. "But then as the word went out among the Sandakan relatives and the general public, it then started to blossom and we then started to have enough money to run it for the year with a little bit over and, gradually, there was an accumulated fund. "When we got to A$53,000 excess in the bank, Tham and I agreed private groups of wealthy and very well educated Australian businessmen on a private trek along the Death March, could be brought into the picture," she said.Rich trekker: Here you are – A$47,000! "We took these rich trekkers to St Michael's Church where the girls lived in a special hostel because the money we raised had to bring them from their village, feed them, educate them and house them since their fathers had a very, very small amount of disposable money of under RM500 a year. "I told them the story some of the girls who went to school, they then all came on board and few days later one of them was walking along the jungle track path, his phone rang and he talked to him for a minute and called out to his friend, and the conversation went like this: 'Oh, the business had been settled today', and they said: 'Oh that's great Jeff, great!' "Later that night he called Neil out and asked: how much money, what's your aim? Neil said: We would like to get the Trust Fund up to A$100,000 so that I wouldn't have this stress on me and go clapping hands constantly trying to raise the money. And he said how much money do you need to get to $A100,000. And Neil said, 'Oh well, we still have A$47,000 to go', and he said: 'Here's my card, send me an invoice and he gave us 47,000 Australian dollars!'" Lynette traced a great break to the fund raising effort. From petty cash to A$300,000Then Target Two became A$200,000, Target Three became A$300,000. "So once word got out that this was a very successful programme, people then, of course, became very encouraged and had the confidence to give quite a lot of money."There are trekkers who follow a particular prisoner-of-war and on the anniversary they might send A$100 of A$200 – that's happening every year, according to her. "We have an Returned Services League Club in Sydney – a once very depressed area in Sydney which had been taken over by young professionals because it's close to the city, now the property value had gone up terrifically. "This little RSL club is on very prime land and a developer offered them huge amount of money which they took. Part of the deal was to give them a new club within that building and every year they send large donations like A$5,000 to A$10,000 to the Trust Fund. So with all this money that is coming in, the Trust is now healthy enough after 10 to 12 years," Lynette noted. A Scholarship Trust in perpetuity The capital is sufficient to provide interest rate in Australia at a premium level for the Trust to maintain forever, Neil noted."Yes, for ever, in perpetuity. So it started off with just wishing bags getting little bits of money each week and it has just grown and grown and people were so generous," Lynette chipped in. As it stands, the financial status is more than RM1 million now."Every year various people do send quite substantial money, not just the RSL Club .We had a very elderly lady who is over 90 with no family, she heard about it, and she contacted us and said her father was an officer who trained young men to go to Malaya and was devastated when the war was over and found so many of the young men he trained had died over here in Sandakan. Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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"She started to send money on a regular basis because she said her father would be pleased to know that the young men he trained and died there, there is some good coming from their deeds. And she is up to A$25,000. "So we have this huge support. We know there are people who are leaving quite substantial amount of money in their wills who are now quite elderly. So we don't expect the Scholarship Trust to disappear," she said.