PETALING JAYA: The MySkills Foundation received a boost to help fulfil its ambition of helping troubled teenagers, after Berjaya Corp Bhd founder and chairman Tan Sri Vincent Tan Chee Yioun donated RM2.5 million to it, to be remitted over 10 years.
Tan said he was more than willing to help the non-profit organisation continue its work as he believed that the more successful a person is, the more charity he should do as it would bring about good karma.
“I am very spiritual and this has become part of my persona due to my mother constantly inculcating Buddhist and Taoist principles in me as a child.
“I was told about the importance of making donations and ever since I started my business at the age of 19, I have taken the idea of making donations to heart. Prayers have helped me overcome the difficulties I have faced.”
He said he prayed every day for blessings and guidance and decided to become a vegetarian after visiting the Tzu Chi Foundation in Taiwan in 2015.
Tan said he was surprised that the charitable foundation was running seven charity hospitals in Taiwan.
He said his first and biggest donation was to a Hindu temple in Setapak, Kuala Lumpur in 1971, as a friend had taken him there to get blessings when opening his business.
“I learnt that the land the temple was sitting on belonged to a government agency that wanted it back. I managed to convince the agency to sell the land to the temple.
“Later, I donated RM3 million to the temple to help it rebuild. I have been constantly donating to Hindu temples after they started approaching me for help.”
Tan said when a person gives a donation, it will come back to him in a good way, adding that one gets blessings by helping others and people have to realise that anything they do to help others will also be a blessing for them.
He also said he decided to become a vegetarian as he believes every creature has the right to live and not be slaughtered for food.
“To further my idea of promoting vegetarianism, a cafe serving meat at the Berjaya Times Square Hotel has been converted to a vegetarian restaurant and so has another cafe at a hotel in Penang.
“I plan to invest more in vegetarian restaurants in the long term,” he said at a fundraising dinner for MySkills Foundation on Monday, where only vegetarian meals were served.
The foundation was founded in 2010 as a non-profit organisation that works closely with at-risk youths (school dropouts and troubled teens from dysfunctional or poverty environments) and provides holistic transformational-based skills training.
Its residential-based training initiative in Kalumpang, Hulu Selangor, is a critical move towards creating workforce readiness and empowering at-risk youth in Malaysia with relevant skill sets for gainful employment.
The initiative supports youth who need sustainable livelihoods and addresses the country’s challenges in hiring talent with technical and vocational education and training skills.
MySkills Foundation was established in response to the need for an alternative programme for change in the lives of a group of dropouts, who were repeatedly turned down by institutions.
