Awards and Donations

The Dr Henry Fong donation

Global citizenship - the awareness of the world as a global community and the recognition of the rights and responsibilities of citizens within it.

Dr Henry Fong Yun-Wah, a prominent Hong Kong business leader, philanthropist and Honorary Doctor of Letters at La Trobe University, Australia is widely respected and admired for his success in business and for his generous support of education and culture.

Through his generous donation, the International Network of Universities will take an important step towards fulfilling its mission of fostering global understanding and cooperation between developed and less developed nations.

The INU network has endorsed the theme of Global Citizenship as a common element across the teaching and research of its member universities. The theme can be broadly conceived as 'international relations' or 'development studies' and as studies in 'human rights' or 'ethnicity/migration' depending upon the terminology of the providing university within the INU. The glue is an adherence to the concept of students being educated to act and to think globally irrespective of their discipline of study, and be given the tools to play an active role in creating and maintaining a more humane and sustainable world.

The donation will make it possible for the Network to arrange student seminars on the theme of Global Citizenship, which will centre on different topics each year, such as peace, environment, politics, race and ethnicity. Each INU university will be able to nominate a student to come together for three or four days of discussions, workshops, site visits etc with distinguished guest speakers from around the world. The first Student Seminar took place at Hiroshima University in August 2006.