Inspiring compassion and kindness

KUALA LUMPUR: Silently reaching out to the needy and underprivileged, a Buddhist foundation has inspired over a million multi-racial volunteers in its humanitarian projects nationwide.
Established in 1993, the Taiwan-based Tzu Chi Foundation has spread its teachings through "Buddhism in Action" by aiding the poor with medical care, education grants, disaster relief and financial support.
Tzu Chi Kuala Lumpur & Selangor branch deputy chief executive officer Sio Kee Hong said thousands of needy students regardless of race or religion in the country have benefited from the education grant given by the foundation.
He said all its volunteer work is based on the four missions of the foundation - charity, medicine, education and culture, mostly by encouraging the rich and knowledgeable to help the underprivileged.
"It is important to aid the needy in education to enable them to grow, be better human beings and to ensure that they put their knowledge and intelligence to good use.
"The grants are public donations to the foundation and it has helped many students at various levels to further their studies and fulfil their dreams," he told theSun today.
Two of Tzu Chi's volunteers from Taiwan and Malaysia will be speaking on environmental issues and its humanitarian works respectively at the "Asean Solidarity to end poverty by creating shared prosperity" talk to be held at the Berjaya Times Square hotel on May 9.
The talk is organised by Gawad Kalinga Community Development Foundation, a Philippine poverty alleviation and nation-building movement. It has worked with the Berjaya Group's Phillipines office on several poverty alleviation projects.
Explaining its disaster reliefs, Sio said it has been part of the aid and relief missions for flood victims in the southern and eastern parts of Peninsular Malaysia.
"Our volunteers do not just distribute aid but are also trained to provide moral and emotional support for families of victims like during the MH370 incident," he said, adding that Tzu Chi has signed memorandum of understanding (MoU) with various airlines.
The MOUs, he said, are to be the disaster relief partners with the airline companies to handle non-Muslim victims during any flight disaster or emergency.
Tzu Chi's charity mission has received recognition from the government when former premier Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi awarded them the Certificate of Appreciation in December 2003.
Being a Taiwan-based Buddhist group, Tzu Chi was founded by a Buddhist nun Shih Cheng Yen or widely known as Dharma Master Cheng Yen, who realised that little could be done without an organisation.
In 1966, she set up the Taiwan Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation, which means the Buddhist compassion and relief foundation, to do the humanitarian work in a more organised way.
In Malaysia, the Tzu Chi teaching was brought by Sister Ye Ci Qing in 1989, when she went to the local Buddhist temples in Penang to spread the philosophy of Tzu Chi.
The Tzu Chi Malaysia liaison office was officially set up in Penang in June 1993 and subsequently in other states.
Malaysia is reportedly said to have the largest following of Tzu Chi outside of Taiwan and has worked with various groups and communities here to reach out to the needy including the indigenous, Tamil schools and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
It has provided aid in cash and kind to people in 68 countries around the world.
Its international relief work carried out since 1991 at disaster-struck areas and refugee camps has also won worldwide recognition, including from the United Nations.