Barbara Ellington, Lifestyle Editor
Michael Lee Chin has made donations totalling $369,846,806 to improve Jamaican. - WINSTON SILL/FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER
Today we continue to profile recipients of the prestigious Gleaner Honour Award. Michael Lee Chin gets the award in the category of Business.
CHAIRMAN OF the Canada-based AIC Funds and the National Commercial Bank (NCB), Michael Lee Chin, is firmly committed to building a better Jamaica.
He does so not only by reinvesting the profits of his 75 per cent share of the bank in Jamaica but through numerous charitable donations to all sectors. Since he acquired control, he has made donations totalling $369,846,806. And he does not plan to stop.
Mr. Lee Chin's reasons for philanthropy are varied. He figures that no one would have guessed that someone born to his humble Portland, Jamaica, beginnings would turn out to be so successful.
"I am the son of a single, orphaned clerk, so it would be very unlikely for me to end up owning a Canadian mutual fund company and a local bank," Mr. Lee Chin said.
Another motivating factor is that, as a broke student in 1971, he received a scholarship from the late Prime Minister Hugh Shearer and never fails to testify that, "had it not been for the Jamaican Government and people", he would not have completed his education.
"I did not choose to be born in Jamaica, I was blessed to be born here," he says. "I did not choose my
experiences, I was fortunate to have ones that made me ambitious. There are
billions of people who do not have a country like Jamaica that engenders
confidence or parents who inspire them so I have to ask myself: What are my responsibilities to my country?"
CAREFULLY GAUGING
He carefully gauges the long and short-term needs of the country before making his charitable donations. He sees wealth creation as the key to prosperity in the island and education as the tool to maximising knowledge and controlling emotions in order to make rational choices.
To that end, he plans to execute his dream to build a boarding school for children who are disadvantaged.
"It will be of world-class standard, offering scholarships to children from indigent areas and they will exist in a controlled environment of play work and study," Mr. Lee Chin told The Gleaner.
Does he ever tire of giving? Mr. Lee Chin said no because there is no point to having wealth if you cannot share it. "If you are blessed and don't do something, there is no point."
