As banker to the community, our Purpose is to help individuals and businesses across communities achieve their aspirations by providing them with innovative financial solutions. In the same helping spirit, OCBC, one of the key corporate members of the Singapore Compact for Corporate Social Responsibility, has a programme designed to support the community, centred on helping children and youths realise their full potential.

Our social responsibility programme continues on from the legacy of our founder, Lee Kong Chian, who in the 1950s actively made contributions to schools and libraries and helped many children and youths fulfil their aspirations through education. OCBC continues to encourage and support academic excellence by awarding book prizes and scholarships to outstanding youths in tertiary educational institutions, and awarded 12 scholarships to help youths to pursue their academic dreams in 2004. Understanding that these youths would have their own aspirations after graduation, our scholarships are awarded without any conditions attached. We also contributed S$200,000 in 2004 as part of the commitment we made in 2003 to donate S$1 million equally over 5 years to the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

As a result of our partnership with NTUC Link to offer dedicated NTUC-OCBC VISA Cards to union members in September 2004, we donated S$250,000 to the Singapore Children's Society and the Children's Cancer Foundation. For the next four years, we will continue to donate 1% of the total spending on these cards, subject to a maximum of S$250,000. This 5-year commitment complements our existing Care Card programme, which continues to donate a percentage of card spending to eight selected charities.

To further support the cause of nurturing children and youths, we adopted the Singapore Children's Society as the main thrust of our involvement in the community, by committing to contribute $2.5million over 5 years to support its cause. Established in 1952, the Children's Society champions and promotes the welfare of children. It works with 12,000 children, youths and their families from disadvantaged backgrounds or who are at risks of neglect and abuse, and administers a broad range of programmes primarily centred on education and nurturing. Besides monetary contributions, our employees also pledged to volunteer their time and skills to enrich the lives of these children, by participating in and complementing various initiatives by the Children's Society, such as social outings, programmes to cultivate interests in reading and mathematics, and money-management seminars.

OCBC Bank has also been a keen supporter of the local arts scene for the last 10 years, and was named Distinguished Patron of the Arts by the National Arts Council for the sixth consecutive year in 2004.

Deeply saddened by the region-wide calamity brought about by the Asian Tsunami disaster which unfortunately claimed many casualties, we sought to help in any way we could to bring relief to the victims and their families. Besides donating about $487,000 to the Singapore Red Cross Society, the STAR Earthquake/Tsunami Relief Fund in Malaysia, and Metro TV's "Indonesia Menangis" relief fund, we also initiated activities to garner support for the international call for aid and relief.

Our staff, customers and business partners showed great compassion for those affected by the crisis. We opened up our banking channels and facilities to facilitate donations to the SRCS. In turn, our customers responded by generously donating over $870,000 through our Credit Card Call Centre, Quick Cheque Deposit boxes, ATMs, internet and phone banking. Our staff also volunteered their services to help the Singapore Red Cross Society exceed its target of assembling 50,000 food packets for families in crisis-hit areas.