August 4, 2017 forbes india | 77The 40 noteworthy givers on this year’s list include
billionaires, celebrities and other generous folksTrying to Make
A Difference
E
ach 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.the 2017 listwill 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 tothe 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.”