FFCCCII AND FIL-CHINESE COMMUNITY DONATE 6,074 PUBLIC SCHOOLS
FFCCCII donated P80M for Typhoon Odette and P300M for COVID charities
Over a thousand years of doing business in the Philippines, our Chinese community has admirably committed itself to philanthropy or helping others. Big Chinese businessmen have shown their open-heartedness towards the less fortunate.
For instance, the Federation of Filipino Chinese Chambers of Commerce & Industry, Inc. (FFCCCII)—umbrella federation of 170 Filipino Chinese chambers of commerce and diverse business organizations—has, over the decades, donated 6,074 public schoolbuildings to mostly disadvantaged rural barrios or villages all over the country under its “Operation Barrio Schools” project, which started in the 1960s.
Largest project supported by small enterprises
FFCCCII Operation Schools is the largest philanthropic project of its kind in Philippine history, supported every year by mostly small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) to conglomerates of the Filipino Chinese community.
Donations were made for calamities and socio-civic causes by the Filipino Chinese Community Calamity Fund (P80 million for typhoon Odette at the outset of 2022, P300 million in 2020 and 2021 for COVID-19 charities such as medical supplies, rice, food nationwide).
Filipino Chinese fire volunteer brigades nationwide volunteer their time and resources to help those afflicted by fire and other disasters, regardless of the victims’ ethnic or socio-economic backgrounds.
Also noteworthy are numerous private civic institutions of the Filipino Chinese business community, such as: Tan Yan Kee Foundation of Lucio Tan conglomerate LT Group, Inc., established by industrialist and philanthropist Lucio C. Tan in memory of his late father; Metrobank Foundation founded by the late banker/philanthropist George S.K. Ty; SM Foundation founded by the late shopping mall tycoon/banker Henry Sy Sr.; Gokongwei Brothers Foundation founded by the late industrialist/philanthropist John Gokongwei, Jr. with his brothers; Megaworld Foundation founded by real estate magnate/industrialist Andrew Tan of Alliance Global Group; the family and different companies of the late Dr. Emilio T. Yap, such as Philtrust Bank, Centro Escolar University (CEU), Manila Hotel, etc.; Don Carlos Palanca Awards for Literature or Palanca Awards, founded by the heirs of the Chinese immigrant industrialist, philanthropist, patron of local Chinese-language education and prewar Philippine Chinese Chamber of Commerce president Carlos Palanca (Chinese name: Tan Guin).
Then there are the small and medium-scale family businesses, majority of which have chosen to donate to charities below the radar or remain low-profile. Tycoons turned philathropists Philanthropist Lucio Tan is chairman emeritus of FFCCCII while the late business icons George Ty, Henry Sy, and John Gokongwei were supporters and honorary advisers of the FFCCCII.
Anna-Marie Harling wrote in the British newspaper The Guardian in 2017 that Chinese philanthropy has been a long tradition. South Korean Dr. Heesu Jang wrote that Asia has a long record of giving, such as China’s clan-based charity inspired by Confucianism, which dates back a thousand years. The philosophical basis of the Chinese tradition of philanthropy includes the humanist moral teachings of Confucianism on benevolence.
Centuries before the Spanish colonizers discovered the Philippines, early Chinese traders, artisans, and migrants were already coming to our archipelago to do brisk domestic and foreign trade (including the famous trans-Pacific Galleon Trade), pioneer industries and agricultural endeavors, raise their families, and undertake socio-civic charities.
Throughout towns, cities, and islands, Chinese entrepreneurs settled, for generations, in local communities and provided assistance during calamities, donations to churches and schools, even significantly donating to the 19th-century Philippine Revolution. These Chinese traders and artisans also didn’t forget their ancestral villages in southeast China, like Fujian province as well as Guangdong, where they donated to socio-civic endeavors, such as education, building temples, village roads or bridges, and other causes. Confucius and community care South Korean intellectual Dr. Heesu Jang wrote that Confucianism introduced enriched traditional Chinese culture to basic concepts of community care, from taking care of the elderly to providing education to the youth. This provision of welfare predated any formal institutionalization of social welfare and civil society. In ancient times, the Chinese citizenry stepped forward to fill this gap in social needs, creating the country’s first systematic private form of charity: family-based kinship organizations.
In his study of ethnic Chinese philanthropy in Southeast Asia, Prof. Thomas Menkhoff wrote that traditionally, philanthropic virtues such as civic betterment, benevolence, charity, compassion or generosity have always been important in Chinese culture as can be seen in the teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism, and folk religion. Both philosophers Confucius and Mencius considered philanthropy as “the distinguishing characteristic of man, as one of the fundamental constituents of nobleness and superiority of character.”