Forbes list: Aboitiz, 3 Pinoys among Asia's top givers

CEBU, Philippines - Cebuano businessman Jon Ramon Aboitiz and three other Filipino taipans were among 48 wealthy individuals named by Forbes Magazine as the Asia Pacific Region’s Heroes of Philanthropy.

According to a posting on Forbes.com, the three other Filipinos named with Aboitiz are Manuel Pangilinan, Henry Sy and Alfonso Yuchengco Jr.

The list, which is coming out in the March 16 issue of the magazine, includes the leading givers from 12 countries in the region, and is the third annual edition of the compilation.

Forbes.com describes Aboitiz, 61, and brothers Roberto and Mikel as the most active members of the Aboitiz family in the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation.

Aboitiz chairs the holding company with investments in energy, construction, logistics, food and banking.

The foundation was set up as a traditional charity by their grandfather Ramon in 1966 but has evolved into a development institution today with focuses on child welfare, community development, Cebuano heritage, microfinance, youth leadership and environment.

The foundation spent $1.6 million in 2007 and over the past five years put hundreds of thousands of dollars into renovating public schools.

Pangilinan, 62, is chairman of Hong Kong-listed First Pacific and New York-listed Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company.

While in Hong Kong, he founded, and still chairs, the Bayanihan Center, which provides cultural and vocational activities for Filipino domestic workers.

He is a sports enthusiast and patron of youth basketball and badminton leagues and has footed the bill for overseas training of national basketball youth teams.

He donated funds for the construction at Ateneo de Manila University of the Manuel V. Pangilinan Center for Student Leadership and bankrolled a retreat house named after his mother for Catholic sisters in Tagaytay.

Henry Sy, 84, is the country’s richest man who built the SM shopping mall empire.

He founded and chairs the SM Foundation, which focuses on health, education and spiritual well-being. It runs clinics near SM malls, repairs pediatric wards and hospices and in 2007 its mobile health and dental clinics treated 164,000 people in remote areas. Alfonso Yuchengco, 85, heads ther Yuchengco conglomerate anchored on insurance and banking interests.

He chairs the Alfonso Yuchengco Foundation, which targets health, nutrition and education issues. One clinic it sponsors is in Cotabato City, where the beneficiaries are Muslims. At any one time, it supports 5,000 college scholarships. - /JST (THE FREEMAN)