Stanley Kwan shows a few pair of worn out shoes brought from Liangshang Sichuan and calls for donation to needy children. Li Na / CHINA DAILY

With more than 30 years of experience as a chartered accountant, Stanley Kwan is an expert in keeping track of numbers and figures. He gladly admits that being an accountant does help him attain his fundraising targets in the numerous charitable causes he's been involved with over the years.

Yet, he considers it hard to delineate the ties he's built through his professional practice and his personal passion. It's a unique mix that led him to a long trail of doing charity for communities as close to home as senior citizens in the greater Toronto area, and as remote as orphans in the mountainous villages of China.

Three years ago, Kwan took his personal passion further by shifting focus from his career to dedicating 30 hours a week to the charitable foundation he started, the Fu Hui Education Foundation.

Three weeks ago, the foundation celebrated its 10th anniversary in Toronto, an occasion to revisit all the work the organization has done to support thousands of university and high school students in China. Fu Hui was the pioneer of the "All Girls' Class" in Liangshan, Sichuan, one of the poorest regions in China, now enabling nearly 2,000 girls to attend school. It also initiated the "Starlet Program" that has supported over 1,000 orphans in Sichuan so they can receive the education.

With a Chinese name that connotes "doing charity with wisdom," Fu Hui's vision doesn't stop at sponsoring children's education. The core group and volunteers are totally hands on, being actively involved in their programs to ensure that the children are benefiting from everything they do, not just financially, but also physically, mentally and emotionally.

Through the years, Kwan and his core group of board of directors, donors and volunteers, would visit the schools and children twice a year, putting their hearts and heads together to cultivate the children's development. Embracing them and interacting with them as "papas and mamas," the core group attaches much importance to addressing the mental and moral concerns of children.

From a distance, a group of volunteers would correspond with students through letters, helping them analyze their problem, counseling them and encouraging them to persevere against adversity.

"What really counts is not just the seeds we sow and the fruits we bear, but the gratitude that fills my heart," said Kwan.

Counting the footprints in his life, Kwan is coming to a full circle. A Cantonese born in Shanghai, he moved to Hong Kong at age 13 in 1962 and then to Canada in 1971 where he became an accountant and established his professional success in Toronto. Riding on his business networking among the Chinese communities around the world, Kwan has made many trips to Hong Kong and China, a destination on which he spent almost all of his flying time.

But then, he rarely set foot in well-heeled cities like Shanghai and Beijing. Instead, his first stop would be the rugged mountain of Yi Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan Province, where he found his calling in life with thousands of impoverished children.

The journey started with a heart for charity. And in Kwan's own words, the "good karma" he's built with the people around him. Through his professional practice, specializing in tax planning, he always approaches work with a personal touch that makes a difference to his clients.

"Sometimes, I would go as far as helping clients not just in their financial matters, but also with their personal matters," he said. "I guess I'm good at listening to others' problems and want to help with solving them."

That good karma apparently goes down well, as a lot of his clients became donors and keen supporters for his charitable work.

Since the 1980s, his charitable work has been leaving indelible marks in the Toronto Chinese community, alongside his professional achievements. From 1987 to 2000, he was the Capital Campaign Chair of the Yee Hong Community Wellness Foundation, spearheading campaigns that raised more than C$50 million (US$46.85 million) to build geriatric centers in the Toronto area. He is also the honorary adviser of Carefirst Seniors and Community Services Association, leading a capital campaign to build an $18 million one-stop multi-service center in Toronto.

With the belief that the Chinese community should also support the mainstream community, he took it upon himself to serve as the chairman of the board of the Scarborough Hospital Foundation, leading the completion of a $20 million campaign to construct a new emergency and critical care center.

Then came the turning point for him to switch to the role of an overseas Chinese returning to China for another journey of giving. It started with a trip to Hong Kong, where he got to know the Fu Hui Charity Foundation.

Touched by the plight and needs of the students, he brought their stories back to Toronto and in turn shared them with his friends at Asian Business Network Association. The passion became a vision to start another foundation by making education its primary mission, hence the birth of the Fu Hui Education Foundation in 2004 in Toronto.

What motivated them was the belief that "education changes lives" and "to empower one child at a time is an investment in a society's future."

In 2005, Kwan met Zhang Jun Lan, a reporter for the Tianjin Daily who witnessed and shared with him the desperate plights of orphans living in Liangshan. After a visit by their core-group members, Fu Hui was determined to extend their mission to provide education for orphans there.

The takeoff was exhilarating, yet the path ahead was full of rough bumps and uphill battles. Be it the treacherous roads to the secluded mountainous village, reluctance of the local people in receiving outside help, longstanding problems of drug addiction and AIDs, or the limited resources available to them, the result was a burst of passion and hope, not just for the children, but also for the future of China.

In fact, having hope for the future of China is the one big impact that the work of Fu Hui has on its own core members. "We all get more patriotic as we get to see more of China and started working with the people there," Kwan said.

He also shared a few secrets to turning their dreams into reality. "The key to making it work is to leverage on existing resources from government and then provide the software to connect everything together, all upon a common ground of good intentions," said Kwan.

"It's the genuine caring that breaks down barriers at the end of the day," he said, adding that they also maintain a low-key approach, getting things done without disrupting local lives and the system as much as possible.

At their 10-year milestone, Fu Hui has set a model in advocating education in poor regions by empowering the local people to participate and support themselves in the process.

In the days to come, Kwan said Fu Hui doesn't aim to grow big, but rather grow solid by establishing their model of a boutique shop with a strategic role to pass on their passion, while continuing to bridge the gap among different resources.

Sipping a cup of buckwheat tea from Liangshan, Kwan mused upon all the memories, smells, sounds, sights, sickness and dangers up on the mountain for him, which he admitted to be far from pleasant. In fact, he said that he still got ill every time after visiting the mountain.

"All I can say is that there are no regrets in my life," he said.

For China Daily