【002】Conducting Surveys to Seek Government Funding

by Kitty Leong | Jul 1, 2026 | CASS Story - EN

Starting a business is more than reciting a slogan. It requires careful planning and execution step by step. In the last article, Mr. Henry Pan shared his experience of becoming a volunteer by accident. He has since been involved in voluntary work for over 45 years. He continues to share his experience of building the organization.

At the preparation meeting on 12 January 1980, Henry was unanimously voted to become the Convenor of the Preparation Committee.

At that time, CASS did not have any service. Henry had to start the organization from scratch to establish child care service.

He wanted to invite like-minded people to join the work. However, Mr. Wee Teck Teo who initiated the project said he needed to seek approval from the Board of the Sydney Chinese School. While Mr. Teo himself was willing to take part in the work, the Chinese School decided not to join the project, and Henry could make decisions on his own. Hence, there were only 2 people in the Project, himself and Mr. Teo.

He invited 6 to 7 of his friends to get involved in the Project. Among them included Dr. Leng Tan, Mr. Ching Tan, Dr. Cecilia Fong, Ms. Patricia Wong, Mrs. Hilda Lee plus Mr. Wee Teck Teo.

Henry found out that the government had set up an organization to assist community groups with intention to apply for funding to operate community services, supporting government’s multiculturalism policies implementation.

After consultation with that organization, Henry learnt that the task required was to submit an application with supporting data indicating the lack of culturally appropriate child care services in the Chinese community and there was an urgent need for the service. The submission required collection of data, analysis of data collected, explanation of why the service was needed, together with proposals and budget.

Henry’s professional background was an engineer, and he did not have knowledge of social research methods. Other committee members were either doctors, teachers, accountant or nurse, and they also did not have knowledge about conducting surveys. Fortunately, two heads are better than one!

How to go about with the survey? There were not too many Chinese migrants at the time. Apart from Chinatown, it was difficult to find other suburbs with a high density of Chinese residents. After discussion, committee members believed that the proposed child care center should be located around Chinatown area. They decided to conduct surveys around Surry Hills where there was a concentration of people with Chinese background. They wanted to collect data to show that the Chinese community urgently needed a culturally appropriate child care service.

From June to August 1980, Henry and the committee members gathered and coordinated a team of volunteers to carry out two significant tasks.

The first was to conduct door-to-door surveys on Chinese residents in the Surry Hills area. The task received the strong support and assistance from the Chinese Masonic Society. Volunteers chose houses with Chinese residents along Commonwealth Street and conducted interviews. They managed to survey over 80 houses with Chinese residents.

The second task was to interview female Chinese factory workers. There were many garment factories in the Surry Hills area then and most of the female workers were Chinese. Henry contacted two factories. After learning about the intention of the committee, the owners were very supportive as the factory workers needed child care services. Around 20 workers from each factory were interviewed and the result was satisfactory.

After the 2 rounds of survey, it was considered that there was a need to collect data from people in the general Chinese community to show their support for the project. How could it be done? Please stay tuned for the next article.

【001】Becoming a Volunteer by Accident

by Kitty Leong | Jul 1, 2026 | CASS Story - EN

Young people can benefit from getting involved in community affairs and understanding the needs of the community. These valuable experiences can help them with their careers. Mr. Henry Pan has always been interested in children’s education. He shares his story about becoming a volunteer by accident in his younger days.

It was 8 December 1979. Henry’s wife was invited by a family friend to attend a forum discussion. He had to stay home to look after their 3-year-old daughter. However, Henry was worried that the little girl might miss her mom. Seeing that it was not a formal meeting, and that he had to drive his wife to the meeting anyway, he decided to take their daughter and sit on the sideline of the meeting as an observer. His wife would be available if their daughter needed her.

The meeting was called by the then Principal of the Sydney Chinese School, Mr. Wee Teck Teo. Australia had started to implement multiculturalism policies at the time and the government encouraged ethnic communities to establish community services. Mr. Teo wished to apply for government funding to establish a child care centre for the Chinese community. He organized a forum to discuss the matter. He believed that child care was a matter closely related to ladies and thus invited women he knew to attend the forum. Henry’s wife was one of them.

There were around 20 people at the forum, and they were all actively participating in the discussion. Henry could relate to the topic and shared his daughter’s experience at a mainstream child care centre. For example, when his daughter became hot during outdoor play, the care worker would remove her child’s jacket; however, they would not help her putting the jacket on later, making her getting sick often during the colder days. Parents had to take time off to look after the sick child and it was very inconvenient.

Henry shared some of his personal views which were acknowledged by the other attendees. The participants believed that Henry should be involved in the organizational work, with the goal of getting government funding.

After the Christmas and New Year holidays, the group met again on 12 January 1980. From the original 20 plus people, only 8 to 9 joined the meeting. Many people were eager to share their views but showed reluctance to participate in organizational work.

A problem emerged after a short while during the discussion. For the project to proceed, there needed to have someone who could be available during working hours to liaise with relevant government departmental officials. The attendees at the meeting were all young Chinese migrants who all had to work and would not be available during working hours.

Henry was the only one whose work hours were quite flexible. He was a Teaching Fellow at the university. His workload was not heavy, while he was required to do his PhD studies. His research topic was noise pollution. As the equipment for his experiments was noisy, he could only carry out his experiments in the night time. He thus had some free time during the day. Everybody was looking at Henry.

Henry was unanimously nominated as the coordinator for the project. He was asked to shoulder responsibility for the organizational work.

Henry was not mentally prepared for taking up this ‘hot potato’, having to produce submission to the government asking for funding to establish a childcare centre for the Chinese community.

Henry had no previous experience in community work. It was a huge difficult task to deal with government departments.

Starting from zero without any resources, what was the journey like? Stay tuned for the next article!

💡Conclusion:

Young people often face many difficulties and challenges when they start a new career. They need to have the courage to face and conquer the challenges.