IN BRIEF (Page 8)

Student fund

Sino-Ocean Land Holdings, a Hong Kong-listed property developer, has set up a 300,000-yuan education fund to help poor students and teachers.

The fund will be mainly used to offer allowances for poverty-stricken students, improve low-income teachers' salaries and put a premium on excellent students and teachers, says Li Ming, president of Sino-Ocean Land Holdings.

Fees removed

China Mobile says it has removed a total of 260 million yuan in communication fees for about 3.329 million mobile phone users in the earthquake area of Sichuan from May 12 to May 31.

To better support Sichuan's earthquake relief, China Mobile decided to exempt all wireless communications fees, including monthly rental charges, domestic roaming fees, domestic long distance calling fees, international long distance calling charges and related service fees from users who resided in or entered Chengdu, Mianyang, Deyang, Guangyuan and Aba Tibetan and Qiang Ethnic Autonomous Prefecture between May 12 and May 31.

List management

CharityInChina.org is working with XZList to promote the use of email list management in non-governmental organizations (NGO) and charities operating in China.

The new service is available via the XZList website and offers two important services to charities and NGOs. Fundraising organizations can work with XZList to use CharityInChina.org's proprietary database of over 35,000 businesses to help solicit important donations or recruit volunteers. NGOs and charities will also be able to upload their own databases to XZList and then send important invitations, reminders, and newsletters to their own databases.

Global responsibility

China Europe International Business School in Shanghai hosted the Third Annual Being Globally Responsible Conference, which featured 34 international corporate social responsibility experts and about 300 MBA students, corporate executives and media members.

Students signed the "Shanghai Consensus", in which they pledged to uphold high values in their professional lives.

Enabling employment

Henan government issued "View on the Implementation of Promoting Employment" earlier this month, which stated that enterprises that employ staff with disabilities are entitled to a 2 million yuan loan. The policy aims to encourage enterprises to increase job opportunities for the disabled.

Companies that employ staff who were previously out of work, or small and medium sized companies that are set up by unemployed are also entitled to preferential tax allowances.

(China Daily 06/23/2008 page8)