Giving and receiving – the two faces of philanthropy
Friday 3 October 2008
Zidi Zhao proposes a toast to the Founders and Benefactors
The elder son of a Chinese immigrant family, Zidi Zhao joined the paid workforce in Australia when he was just 10 years old. He longed to be able to play with his friends after school each day, but instead he worked to earn money to help his family. His father was already working three jobs to support his wife and children.Life in Australia was not as good as the family had hoped.
By contrast, Roger Riordan was a middle-aged academic with a moderate pension to look forward to in retirement. Then he wrote a program to remove a troublesome computer virus and gave it to students as shareware. He retired, intending that his anti-virus software would be his hobby.
Instead, it became the basis of Cybec, a rapidly expanding business
which grew by 60% per annum for nine consecutive years.
Roger wanted to redress the imbalance between the recognition of athletic prowess and academic ability, so he set aside a percentage of his profits to endow scholarships. The first of these was established at Trinity in 1995. In 1999, he sold the company and established the Cybec Charitable Foundation. Then followed scholarships for Indigenous students, and later for refugees.
Zidi Zhao continued working after school while attending Northcote High, a school underrepresented among students at the University of Melbourne and therefore included in the University’s Melbourne Access program, designed to encourage students from disadvantaged backgrounds to aim for University. This brought Zidi to Trinity for a two-day discovery visit. ‘To be honest, I didn’t even know places like this existed! It was an amazing experience for me,’ he says.
Dr Roger Riordan AM addresses the dinner
Suitably inspired, Zidi lessened his working hours and put more effort into his studies. As ‘a long shot’ he applied for a scholarship to Trinity – and was successful. ‘I nearly cried, that was how happy I was,’ he admits.
He didn’t know it then, but his happiness was the result of Roger and Pat Riordan’s decision to provide a new scholarship in 2004 for a Melbourne Access student.
Today, more than 110 students across Australia have benefited from Roger’s generous scholarships, about 27 of them at Trinity. ‘We try to keep in touch with them all, and we get great pleasure from hearing about their progress,’ says Roger, who now describes Zidi as having ‘graduated to the status of an old friend.’
Both Roger and Zidi addressed guests at this evening’s dinner to commemorate the Founders and Benefactors of Trinity College. Each has had their life transformed by the power of philanthropy. Each has gained immeasurably.