Taipei, Taiwan (Merxwire) – Two charities chaired by Taiwanese entrepreneur and philanthropist Angelo Koo launched programs separately in June to support disadvantaged school children in Taiwan.
The KGI Charity Foundation rolled out a program on June 15 to sponsor English lessons by local schools for disadvantaged children in 2020.
The foundation said that school children nowadays have more opportunities to go abroad for international exchanges. Recent examples include school children from Taiwan’s Orchid Island visiting New Zealand to participate in the Austronesian Culture Festival, young baseball players from Taitung travelling to the United States to play in an international game and athletes from Chiayi engaging in sports exchanges in Japan. With better English mastery, Taiwanese school children can better communicate with their peers from other countries and have more confidence on the international stage, the foundation said.
The KGI Charity Foundation was founded by KGI Securities in 2012 to help disadvantaged members of the society with a special focus on underprivileged children. The foundation has funded English lessons and school lunches for children in Taiwan’s Taitung, Chiayi and Pingtung counties for six years. Angelo Koo currently serves as the chairman of the foundation.
In a separate project, the CDF Foundation, also chaired by Koo, donated NT$5 million (US$166,667) to subsidize lunches for over 10,000 children in 201 schools in Taiwan. The charity foundation has been supporting school lunch programs in rural Taiwan for 15 years.
The CDF Foundation said it hopes to help school children get the nutrients they need while enhancing their resistance to viruses by giving them healthy food.
Angelo Koo is a key figure in Taiwan’s financial sector and a philanthropist. He donated in his personal capacity one million surgical masks to New Jersey in April. He also donated masks to Japan in May through the KGI Charity Foundation. In addition to the two charity foundations, Koo also chairs Taiwan-based CDIB Capital Group and CDIB Capital International Corporation.