Speech for AMAZE event

I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and pay my respects to elders past and present.
• Acknowledgement of Country
• Acknowledgement of The Hon. Matthew Guy MP
• Acknowledgement of Bernie Finn, MP
• Acknowledgement of the Executive members of Australia China Education Foundation in attendance:

Today I would also acknowledge the presence of community leaders of
• Mr Simon QIAN, President of Australian Shanghai Business Association Inc; and Vice President of The Federation of Chinese Associations (Vic) Inc.
• Dr. Hua Cao, representing Dr. Stanley Chiang, President of Australiasian Promotional Society for Culture, Education, Economics and Trade (APSCEET);
• Ms Christy GUO, President of Guangdong General Commercial Chamber of Australia Inc.
• Ms Xianke YIN, Founder and Honory Member for life of the Shangdong Association in Australia Inc.
• Ms CIndy XUE, Vice-President of the Australia Zhejiang Association Inc.

1) I am proud to represent the Australia China Education Foundation, its 7 executive committee and its 200 members today. From 30 years ago to present day, many of our members left China and started new lives in Australia. We have come from different backgrounds, yet we have the same hope — to make a better life in this new country, that we now call our home.
2) Many of us are now successful business leaders, community representatives, and have raised happy families in Australia.
3) To arrive at where we are today, we feel immensely grateful. It is not simply by merit of our own. In fact, it is our common realisation that Australia’s society and its core values have provided the environment for us to work hard, to fare equally and to be duly acknowledged.
4) It is these kinds of opportunities that ACEF wishes to promote, through the removal of barriers to education. It is through love and gratitude that we have walked this far in our journey. We wish to help others to have these opportunities.
Since its establishment in 2014, this desire has been the driving force of the ACEF. We have developed 6 projects, In the past three years we have raised over $500,000, including three programs directly benefiting local communities.
• In 2014, We developed our first program to sponsor disadvantaged children to complete their education in Xiu Shui Jianxi province of China,
• Since 2014, we have joined the World’s Greatest Shave to raise funds for the Leukaemia foundation;
• In 2015, we sponsored a program that offers complimentary lunch for village school kids in Gansu province.
• From 2017, we sponsored Chinese medical students in their research training at the Walter-Elizer Hall Institute of Medical Research.
• In 2017, we also started to raise fund for building of a primary school in a remote county, MaliPo of Yunnan.
You can find further details on our website.

We are very proud to be here today, to promote the awareness of autistic spectrum disorder. We thank AMAZE for the opportunity to collaborate and translate the Autism Information Resources into Chinese.
Over the last few years, I have had first hand experience of the many challenges families with autistic children may face, and realised that assistance in Chinese language was few. Much more work is needed in this area to remove barriers to education and work for ASD sufferers, such as better community awareness and targeted specialist support.
Today we are proud to donate $5000 to AMAZE as a token of our support to ASD sufferers. This could not be possible without the dedicated work of our volunteers that started from last year. I wish to thank all of our volunteers who worked tirelessly to sell close to 400 scarves to many of their friends and family members. Today we have our volunteer representatives, Ms Sophie Wang,and Ms Yaping Jiang who were the top two best sellers of these beautiful scarves.
The story of Bi ChangYue – the scarf designer – who has had autism since age three, and later discovered his ability as an artist is encouraging to many families. It is this light of hope that we strive to bring through our foundation work.

Thank you for your support.