Lottery winners spread their good fortune throughout society

Sunday, January 22, 2006 posted 10:18 AM EST

Taiwan's national lottery has been in existence for four years now. Over this time, the lottery has enabled nearly 160 people to become millionaires. Many winners have used their winnings to do good for society. One of the most well known examples is that of the young female teacher who won the grand prize and decided to donate all of her winnings to charity. However, many other people have made large donations as well. One winner donated a large sum of money to the Creation Social Welfare Foundation, an organization in which volunteers provide care to invalids. Other donations have been made to underprivileged families, giving them ample funds to overcome various challenges. One owner of a stand that sells lottery tickets even donated his earnings from selling tickets to a fund to erect a baseball stadium. These are just a few of the stories that Taipei Fubon Bank, the issuer of the lottery, has hailed as "moving."

Last year, a 30-year-old single female schoolteacher who resides in central Taiwan won the grand prize in the lotto game, yielding her tens of millions of NT dollars. The teacher, however, said that she did not want to keep any of the money and instead donated all of the after tax winnings to various charitable organizations. The teacher has come to be the most charitable winner of the lottery in its history. What was even more amazing was that the woman's family was totally supportive of her decision to give away her winnings.

The female teacher is an instructor in a school in central Taiwan. Her home is little different from the house of any other public school teacher. She certainly is not wealthy. However, she would spend NT$50 or NT$100 to buy one or two tickets in the lotto game in every round of the lottery. She said that while she hoped to win the lottery, her interest was in obtaining funds that she could use to help others rather than becoming rich herself.

The teacher said that ordinarily she does not have much extra money to contribute to charitable events or organizations, adding that her main goal in buying the lottery tickets was that she wanted to do good for others. In an unbelievable stroke of good fortune, the teacher one day actually won the grand prize. After winning, she did not hesitate for a moment in her decision to donate all of her winnings. Most of the money was donated to various cultural and education groups, with the hope that those groups would provide assistance to youngsters from underprivileged families.

Meanwhile, one man, known as "Yu-sheng", also won the grand prize in the lottery. Yu-sheng himself is handicapped. In March last year, he read about a student who attends a center for the mentally retarded being violently evicted from the community by residents of the area. As a result, the student was no longer able to enter the community to attend school. Yu-sheng said he could empathize with the plight of the student, as many handicapped people face all sorts of difficulties in returning to society. He said he hoped that he could find some way of helping these people.

One day, Yu-sheng won the a prize of NT$100 million in the lottery. His first action after winning the lottery was to donate NT$10 million to the Syin Lu Welfare Foundation to be used in their "Community Residence and Life Services Project." Yu-sheng said he hoped that other handicapped people could share in his good fortune. He said he also hoped that his action would help to bring attention to the public at large of the rights of the handicapped to reside within the community and that the public should show more concern for these people.

The single largest donation received by Taipei Fubon Bank since it began issuing the lottery came from a volunteer at the Creation Social Welfare Foundation. The volunteer, Chang Tien-you, has for a long time provided service to invalids who have access to very limited amounts of funds. Perhaps as a reward for his long years of dedicated service, Chang won day unexpectedly won the grand prize in the lottery, winning over NT$100 million. After winning the prize, Chang entrusted NT$24 million to the bank to be donated to various organizations. Of that amount, NT$20 million was donated to the Creation Social Welfare Foundation, making it the single biggest donation to an institution in the history of the lottery. It was also the largest donation received by the foundation in its 19 years in existence.

Yang Jui-tung of Taipei Fubon Bank said that Chang has spent a considerable amount of time taking care of people who are invalids, and so he has a sense of what they are going through. In addition, given the increasing lack of interest among society in making donations to charitable organizations, the number of receipts that the foundation receives as donations has shrunk over the years. As a result, when receiving his lottery winnings, Chang designated that a portion of the funds should be donated to the foundation, hoping that more funding would be available to provide care to invalids.

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