Fr Long Memorial Block
Declared open on 4th May 2006 by Mr Patrick Bourne, the Deputy Head of Mission, Embassy of Ireland to India and Sri Lanka
Updated: 16 Nov 08
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Executive Committee 2007/08
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President's Speech
Distinguished Chief Guest Prof. Chitramohan, Dr. Sumitra Chitramohan, Our Special Guests, Rev. Fathers, Members of the Association & their families and ladies and Gentlemen,
It is with great pleasure, on behalf of St. Patrick’s Alumni Association , I welcome you all for our Annual Dinner Dance.
First of all let me introduce our Chief Guest Prof. Chitramohan. Of course, he does not need an introduction as he is well known to so many of us but it is my duty to say a few words about him. It is indeed difficult to say few words because his achievements are far and wide. Prof. Chitramohan qualified as a Medical Doctor from University of Colombo Srilanka, and came to the UK in 1985 did his higher qualifications in the field of Psychiatry. He further specialised in Older Age Psychiatry and currently holds a position as Consultant Psychiatrist and Deputy Medical Director with Birmingham and Solihull mental Health Foundation trust. He is well known among the Royal College of Psychiatrists and is in their Central Executive committee. He has been awarded National Bronze Award for his Clinical Excellence. He is also involved in Srilankan Psychiatric Association and he was the Chair of the South Asian Psychiatric Forum. He also received his Professorship at University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur where he is an External examiner as well as in MGR Medical University in Madras. He is very well known all over the world in his field and being invited to lecture at various universities and conferences all over the world.
He has always been a loyal Patrician and have been a ardent supporter of our association. His loyalty transforms into various forms of action especially into his generosity. He has organised a sponsorship programme through a pharmaceutical industry and helped to fund various projects like Drama & English room and Information Technology. He also has given generously from his own pocket to fund the various activities of the association. For his loyalty and support to the association, he was honoured as “Distinguished Patrician” by the association. He is also the chairman of the Trustees of the Perpetual Fund. While I was doing some research on Prof. Chitramohan, I came across a news letter by the Birmingham & Solihull Mental health trust. It was mentioned that Professor. has helped to raise 250members for the Foundation Trust. If you see in my message professor, one of our aim for the coming year is to raise membership. I hope we also can count on him.
I do not want to take too much time of yours by repeating my message which you all have got. But I would like to elaborate on couple of points. First the Ramakrishnan Fund. As I mentioned in the message, it was one member donation but the donation was not going through because there was no feed back from the college to the donor. So as an Association I am proud to say that we intervened between the donor and the rector and established that communication, hence we deposited 451,122 rupees (£2118). Second one is Sloan Robinson fund. Again, we the association communicated with them and wrote them and got the donation of £1250pounds. With this money and some further fund we have forwarded £2150 pounds. So nearly we have forwarded 5000 pounds this year. And please note, in this money not a single penny was spent a building or decorate the school. This is purely for teaching purposes.
But this is not enough. We want to do more. We want to educate more children. We want to make our school is the best School in Jaffna town, best school in Northern Province, best in Sri Lanka. That is our aim that is our target that is our goal.
About 10months ago when I stood here and delivered my inaugural speech, I said we have 65,000 in our perpetual fund pot. If you see my message, you will see it has gone up to 80,000. This we did because of the clever strategy of safe and sound investment. Here I have to thank our both past treasurer Mr. C. Ponnukone and our present Treasurer, Mr. Joseph Edirmanasinghe. With the credit crunch, I am not sure I will be able to be so proud of our achievement next year but I can assure you we will do everything our power to achieve our goals,
Two three weeks ago, I spoke with Fr. Rector. Our under 17 Cricket team was the winner of Jaffna District. They had to go and play with winners of the Mannar district. The distance between Mannar & Jaffna is only 75miles. Do you know how long it took to the boys to reach there? Can anyone have a guess? I will tell you. It took 5 whole days. They had to go from Jaffna to Kankesanturai by boat and then from KKS to Trincomallee by another boat and from Trinco to Madawachi and from there they have to change vehicle to go to Mannar. By the time the players reached Mannar, they are hardly in a position to play because they were suffering from sea sickness, lack of food and tiredness. But still they won the match. They also went to Colombo . They could have gone by plane. It could have cost Fr. Rector cost Rs. 21,000 per person. He could not afford such high fare. Though he knew that the players won’t be fit to play, he still sent them by ship. Why? Because, they have not seen a train. They have not seen a posh car. He wanted these students to see how the outside world looks like.
So ladies and gentlemen, you all are generous people. You all want to help us. That is why you all are here. But we do get criticised on different matters.
1) Why aren’t we having the dinner dance at Christmas? I would like to tell these people that our Dinner Dance is not about Christmas. It is about St. Patrick’s. It is to raise fund for St.Patrick’s College. So regardless whether the Dinner Dance is in Christmas or in at any time of the year, please come and support us and help us to raise fund.
2) Why are we having 1 function instead of 2? I will tell you why. Organising an event like this takes lot of time and effort of lot of people. At the end sometimes the profit make does not add up to the time and effort we put in. Therefore, we have decided to have only one function and concentrate our time and effort in raising fund in different ways.
3) I also would like to let you all know that we have to put the price of the ticket up, if we want produce a high standard of function. As you all know high standard does not come cheap. If we are to keep up a certain standard and to raise funds, we have to raise the ticket charges.
I also would like to offer my Congratulations to Antonipillai Manoraj who has been awarded OBE by the queen last year. So ladies and gentlemen, please express your congratulations to Manoraj by putting your hands together.
I know our secretary will be giving vote of thanks later but I like to thank few people personally. First of all I like to thank all the committee members for their cooperation and support throughout the year. Without them we would not have a function today. Among them, I have to thank especially Chelva Sabapathy who stood in the place of Social Secretary at my request and organised this event. I have to thank our past President Dr. Anton Sandrasegars who had been my mentor. My special big thank you to two josephs. They are Joseph Swen Edirmansinghe and Joseph Vetha Louis. They have been my right hand and left hand throughout the year, and guys I could not have functioned without you both. I also like to thank all those who helped us out even though they are not in the committee. I won’t be naming them because I might miss out somebody. Last but not least I like to thank my wife and children as well as on behalf of the Ex co all the wives and children of the committee members. Because I know they put up a lot. When anything to do with our College, we Patricians have hardly any time for our families. All what we do is ignore them and we go into our own world of St. Patrick’s. So ladies, boys and girls, I thank you all on behalf of all the committee members.
Finally, to show that even in the midst of our enjoyment we think of our long suffering people back at home, please all of you stand an observe a minute silence.
Please everyone sit down. I wish you all a very enjoyable evening and hope to see you all again at our next function.
Thank you.
President's Message
Dear Members and well wishers,
It is with great pleasure, on behalf of St. Patrick’s College Alumni Association, that I welcome you all for our annual Dinner Dance. It is almost an year since I took over the reins of Presidency and what an year it has been. As we are a charity organisation and fully run by volunteers, we have been working hard to achieve our goals in different ways.
Our goals:
Helping our Alma Mater to grow and improve specially in academic curriculum (sports and other extra curricular activities are sponsored by other Alumni Associations around the globe)
Helping as many less fortunate students as possible to achieve their dream in their academic career
Raising awareness and funds for our Perpetual Trust Fund
What have we achieved during the past year?
We have sent money for Ramakrishnan Scholarship. Though this is donated by one of our members, the college benefitted an increased amount of cash due to our charitable status.
We also received a donation from Robinson for funding the less fortunate students who are not in a position to pay their facility fees.
Due to clever investment strategy, we have raised our Perpetual Fund to £80,000
We have also succeeded in forming a group of trustees to administer the Perpetual Trust Fund
What is our plan for the coming year?
We are planning to raise funds by approaching individuals and various companies
With the help of Rev. Fr. Rector, we are planning to compose a prospectus which would facilitate the contributors to understand the predicament easily
Promote the uptake of new memberships and update the membership database
Host our annual Dinner Dance in more attractive and innovative way
I would also like to take this opportunity to appeal to you all to render your support in any way you can, so that we can achieve our worthwhile goals in a short time as possible.
May I also take this opportunity to wish you all an enjoyable evening.
Long live St. Patrick’s College
Yours sincerely,
Dr. N.R.Rubakumar
President
Fr Long Memorial Block
Declared open on 4th May 2006 by Mr Patrick Bourne, the Deputy Head of Mission, Embassy of Ireland to India and Sri Lanka