What moves this Malaysian property tycoon to help needy Filipinos?
What moves this Malaysian property tycoon to help needy Filipinos?
Berjaya commits to fund more public housing in the Philippines
If rich Filipinos won’t do it, a Malaysian will.
Vincent Tan, founder of Malaysian conglomerate Berjaya Group, has vowed anew to shelter thousands of destitute households in the Philippines.
“We committed 3,000 houses several years ago and if you build faster, we would like to commit 5,000 houses,” he said at the closing ceremony of the Global Social Business Summit this month in the province of Bulacan.
Tan, who has a net worth of USD1.1 billion, counts as one of the most generous benefactors of the social welfare nonprofit Gawad Kalinga (GK) Community Development Foundation. Berjaya and GK have jointly developed 1,000 houses across 12 resettlement projects in the Philippines.
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“The rich became rich because a lot of poor people supported their businesses,” Tan reasoned.
In partnership with GK, Berjaya pledged in 2012 to build 3,000 homes for low-income Filipinos, especially those displaced by natural calamities. In 2015, Tan personally attended groundbreaking ceremonies of a 100-unit village in Cagayan de Oro that was being built for survivors of Tropical Storm Washi (Sendong).
Tan claimed to have watched the calamity unfold from London in 2011. He was similarly moved when Typhoon Bopha (Pablo) struck a year later in Compostela Valley.
“I pledge half of my wealth to charitable work,” he said. “The masses support our business and who are the masses? Many of them are poor.”
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Source: Property Report