Successful entrepreneur and pioneer of a group of manufacturing companies, Mr Sukanto Tanoto, established the Tanoto Scholarship Fund through an endowed gift by the Tanoto Foundation to help needy undergraduate medical students with their tuition fees to pursue their education in the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. In the words of Mr Sukanto Tanoto and his wife, Mrs Tinah Bingei Tanoto, “all people should have the opportunity to reach their full potential…Making a difference in people’s lives is, perhaps, the most satisfying thing one can do.”
Mr Sukanto Tanoto, and Mrs Tinah Bingei Tanoto, both had to leave high school before graduation in order to support their families and their businesses. Together, they founded the Tanoto Foundation that seeks to reduce hardship and break the cycle of intergenerational poverty through education, empowerment and enhancement programs. In the field of education, the Tanoto Foundation provides scholarships to students and helps them to fulfill their dreams of receiving a high-quality education.
The Tanoto Scholarship Fund will support NUS undergraduate medical students in the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine throughout the entire duration of their studies. One of the scholars, Faith Leong, is able to study medicine without any financial worries and can concentrate fully to studies, in order to pursue her lifelong calling to be a doctor. "I am immensely grateful for all the financial aid that I have received thus far and will definitely be willing to give back to others who require similar aid in the future," she says.
Faith believes deeply that medicine is not just a job, but a calling. During an attachment in pre-university, she was inspired, by the level of care and effort that a cancer doctor made for his patients. During a power outage, he climbed 10 flights of stairs to personally retrieve heat-sensitive chemotherapy drugs and store them properly. "He showed me the standard of care and ethics I would want to provide for my patients in the future as a professional," she shares.