Model and actress Lin Chi-ling (林志玲) hopes to follow the example of retired tennis player Andre Agassi and establish a charitable foundation to help needy children.
Lin drew inspiration for her ambition at a charity event in Taipei last month that she attended along with Agassi. At the event, which raised NT$1.5 million (US$51,670) for three social welfare groups, including the Taiwan Foundation for Rare Disorders, Lin renewed her acquaintance with Wu I-hsin (巫以欣), an 18-year-old girl suffering from Niemann-Pick disease.
Having first met Wu at an event arranged by the foundation three years earlier, Lin was shocked to find that Wu’s condition had worsened and that her younger brother had also fallen ill with the disease.
File Photo: Pan Shao-tang, Taipei Times
Seeing the difficulties Wu and her brother had to deal with, Lin said she hoped she could do more to help children like them, including setting up her own foundation.
The top model is no stranger to charitable activities. She served as an ambassador for the “HIV/AIDS Hope Initiative” organized by World Vision Taiwan in 2006, when she went to Swaziland to visit orphans whose parents had died of AIDS.
“Through the visit to children, I gained the power to go forward. Charity shouldn’t just be talk, but be carried out as a part of our life,” Lin said.
As for her own future, the model said: “Looking ahead to 2011, I hope that I can have more time to be with my family, or go on a trip to study or take a vacation and think carefully about the next step of my life.”
One of her options, she said, would be to follow the example of Agassi and his wife, Steffi Graf, and set up a charitable foundation.
Agassi set up the Andre Agassi Foundation for Education in 1994 to help children and in 2001 established the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy, a tuition-free charter school for at-risk children.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
RSS