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.
The first of 10 new high-capacity trains purchased from South Korea’s Hyundai Rotem arrived at the Port of Taipei yesterday to meet the demands of an expanding metro network, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. The train completed a three-day, 1,200km voyage from the Port of Masan in South Korea, the company said. Costing NT$590 million (US$18.79 million) each, the new six-carriage trains feature a redesigned interior based on "human-centric" transportation concepts, TRTC said. The design utilizes continuous longitudinal seating to widen the aisles and optimize passenger flow, while also upgrading passenger information displays and driving control systems for a more comfortable
Taiwan's first indigenous defense submarine, the SS-711 Hai Kun (海鯤, or Narwhal), departed for its 13th sea trial at 7am today, marking its seventh submerged test, with delivery to the navy scheduled for July. The outing also marked its first sea deployment since President William Lai (賴清德) boarded the submarine for an inspection on March 19, drawing a crowd of military enthusiasts who gathered to show support. The submarine this morning departed port accompanied by CSBC Corp’s Endeavor Manta (奮進魔鬼魚號) uncrewed surface vessel and a navy M109 assault boat. Amid public interest in key milestones such as torpedo-launching operations and overnight submerged trials,
Quarantine awareness posters at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport have gone viral for their use of wordplay. Issued by the airport branch of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency, the posters feature sniffer dogs making a range of facial expressions, paired with advisory messages built around homophones. “We update the messages for holidays and campaign needs, periodically refreshing materials to attract people’s attention,” quarantine officials said. “The aim is to use the dogs’ appeal to draw focus to quarantine regulations.” A Japanese traveler visiting Taiwan has posted a photo on X of a poster showing a quarantine dog with a
Taiwan’s coffee community has launched a “one-person-one-e-mail” campaign, calling for people to send a protest-e-mail to the World Coffee Championships (WCC) urging it to redesignate Taiwanese competitors as from “Taiwan,” rather than “Chinese Taipei.” The call followed sudden action last week after the WCC changed all references to Taiwanese competitors from “Taiwan” to “Chinese Taipei,” including recent World Latte Art champion Bala (林紹興), who won the World Latte Art Championship in San Diego earlier this month. When Bala received the trophy, he was referred to as representing Taiwan, as well as in the announcement on the WCC’s Web site, until it
RSS