Hotel owner to start charity lunches to aid schoolkids in need

MELAKA: This Yuletide season will be the starting point for an ongoing charity fund drive to help schoolchildren in the state.

Settlement Hotel owner Billy Leong will launch the fund on Dec 15 and will organise charity vegetarian lunches on a monthly basis.

“We were supposed to launch our fund on Christmas Day but brought it forward by 10 days because we may be really busy on the festive day,” he said here yesterday.

Leong said 25% of the proceeds from the charity lunches will be set aside to help schoolchildren in need, as well as charity homes like the Home for Special Children here and the Down Syndrome Association.

“I am confident of getting support for this charitable effort,” he said.

Leong said the vegetarian dishes will be prepared by an experienced cook with the help of the hotel’s kitchen staff.

“We hope to build momentum for doing good through these monthly charity lunches,” he said.

Last Christmas, Leong raised and donated RM16,000 to two Melaka orphanages, one NGO that deals with education, and an old folks home in Seremban.

Children from the two homes also received Christmas toys and red packets.

Leong has also sponsored overseas study tours for Melaka students and offered his hotel’s conference room for their co-curricular activities.

Despite his full-time job managing the medium-sized boutique hotel in Ujong Pasir, the bachelor is active in charity, funding education programmes and organising giveaways.

His deeds have earned him praise from MCA president Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai and Melaka Chief Minister Datuk Seri Idris Haron, among others.

Idris even invited Leong to his office in January to present him with a token of appreciation for his services to the state’s schoolchildren.