Sphere No.44 (Mar 2018)

promise was made in 2013 and, four years later, the dream came true. Over 200 students from China were admitted to the Guangdong Technion Israel Institute of Technology (GTIIT) in 2017 and will form the vanguard for what will become, “a major research institute that will help not only China and Israel, but also mankind in general,” according to Technion President Peretz Lavie. President Lavie spoke those words at the school’s groundbreaking ceremony in December 2015 as building was beginning on the new campus adjacent to Shantou University, in Guangdong, in the People’s Republic of China. The promise was made two years before that, in 2013, A Sphere #44 2018 22 Philanthropy focus Innovation A Dream Comes True: GTIIT is born A promise is kept as the Li Ka Shing Foundation brings Chinese and Israeli students together to build a bright future through innovation and research. 13 buildings 29 classrooms 14 55 An impressive new campus beckons the innovators of tomorrow. with a major project bringing together academia, government and the Li Ka Shing Foundation (LKSF). A dream is born The Guangdong provincial government and Shantou municipal government committed RMB780 million and 383,700 square metres of land for the new campus to rise. The LKSF pledged over USD130 million in 2013, the largest ever single donation to Technion and one of the largest in Israeli education. In the beginning, Mr Li saw the investment as not just something nice to do, but as a solemn duty, stating, “Our responsibility is to invest in reforms in education that unlock that genius and enable the continuing realisation of human potential, building a knowledge-rich society and securing a sustainable quality of life for all. Failing to do so amounts to a crime against the future.” This was in the early days of a fast- developing relationship between the Chinese and Israeli institutions, with the LKSF acting as a catalyst to bring them together. A range of Israeli luminaries have supported the connection and looked forward to this opening. At the 2015 groundbreaking ceremony, luminaries included the late Israeli President, Shimon Peres, Nobel Laureate Aaron Ciechanover (Chemistry, 2004), and the Mayor of Haifa, Yona Yahav. Professor Ciechanover was born in Haifa and now has a sister; a sister city, that is. That same ceremony saw Shantou and teaching laboratories research laboratories