Our Founder - Mrs Tsao Ng Yu Shun

The Tsao Foundation was founded by Mrs Tsao Ng Yu Shun, who had aspired to study nursing when she was a young woman in Shanghai. Mrs Tsao felt it was her calling to serve the aged, the sick and the disadvantaged. Although she never had the chance to pursue her dream in her youth, she fulfilled her wish to contribute towards the well being of older people when she set up the Tsao Foundation in 1993, in honour of her father and father-in-law. She was then 87 years young.

She said: “I want to ease some of the hardships, and bring some quality of life for all elderly, especially those in need. After all, we all deserve some peace and dignity in old age.”

Plight of older women close to her heart

Close to Mrs Tsao Ng Yu Shun’s heart was the plight of older women whose lifetime of sacrifices as wife, mother and family caregiver made them particularly vulnerable to poverty and ill health, and dependent on others for her old age needs.

As a woman ahead of her times, Mrs Tsao used to tell her grandchildren, “A woman must be a master of her own destiny.”

Aware of her vulnerability of being a woman, Mrs Tsao, then a young married woman in the 1930s, dreamt of earning her own independent income.

Entrepreneurial even as a young woman

While she managed the family’s finances, she learnt the basics of investing and banking practices. When an opportunity came for her to start a small business, she took it. She bought over a jewellery business on the then- fashionable Nanking Road in Shanghai. She managed her new business, and oversaw her children’s needs and the family household – and she did all of them remarkably well.

However, her strong desire to help the aged poor and particularly, older women never left her.

Resolved to make a difference to society, Mrs Tsao set up the Tsao Foundation in 1993 at the age of 87, to honour her father and father-in-law.

Today, as the Tsao Foundation enters into its second decade of existence, Mrs Tsao’s vision of helping older people attain a better quality of life is perhaps never more relevant as Singapore’s population continues to be among the fastest ageing in the world.