The 40 noteworthy givers include billionaires, celebrities and other generous folks
Each year since 2008, we’ve scoured the Asia-Pacific region for our list of top philanthropists. We look for men and women who made news with their altruism over the past year, and we also seek to spotlight people who have compiled a record of notable contributions over the years.
The members of this year’s honour roll pursued causes from launching a food bank in Singapore and training burn victims to be bakers in India to establishing a school for gifted children in Indonesia and training government officials in leadership and good governance in the Philippines. For the first time, philanthropists from Myanmar and Vietnam make the list.
The goal is to pick only true philanthropists—people who are giving their own money, not their company’s (unless they own most of the company), because we don’t consider donating shareholder funds as charity. And we also don’t list people who work in philanthropy solely as foundation heads, volunteers or fundraisers. We want to focus on the people supplying the financing and sketching the broad vision. If our effort in compiling this roster encourages more people to support worthy causes, then we’ll consider it a good deed.
CHINA
Preparing for the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Charles Chen 45
CO-FOUNDER, TENCENT
Three decades ago, Charles Chen’s illiterate grandmother encouraged him to take the national college entrance exam. “University education was the key to opening a door that would alter one’s destiny,” says the former Tencent executive. Indeed, it was in college that he met the other four core founders of the internet-services giant and also his future wife.
Last year, he committed $320 million to improving education. The money will fund the Yidan Prize (Yidan is his Chinese given name), which will be awarded each year to support the most transformational ideas in education. The first two winners will be announced in September, and each will receive $3.9 million, including $1.9 million to pursue their projects.
Chen left Tencent in 2013 and became a full-time philanthropist, establishing the Tencent Charity Foundation and giving $300 million to upgrade Wuhan College, a private liberal arts college in China. He’s inspired by how the internet has transformed human interaction worldwide. “We need new thinking for a successful transition to the fourth industrial revolution, an era of human-machine interdependence,” he says. “It is time for us to rethink who we are educating, how we are educating them and why we are educating them the way we are.”
(This story appears in the 04 August, 2017 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)