From Managing Semiconductor Giant to Asia’s Biggest Charity

Seven years ago Yen Po-Wen (顏博文) was chief executive officer of United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), Taiwan’s second largest maker of semi-conductors, a global company headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan, plus local offices in United States, Europe, China, Japan, Korea and Singapore, with around 20,000 employees worldwide.

Today he is CEO of the Buddhist Tzu Chi Charity Foundation, Asia’s biggest faith-based charity and one of the largest in the world. He manages an institution with more than 100,000 volunteers in Taiwan and overseas, branches in 68 countries that have provided humanitarian work in 136 countries and regions, and annual budget of US$250-300 million.

He has swapped his office in a tower block in the Hsinchu Science Park for a shared ground-floor office space in the Jing Si Abode, the foundation’s headquarters in Hualien, on the east coast of Taiwan.

On one side is the Central Mountain Range and the other the Pacific Ocean, roaring and heaving. The headquarters is a group of buildings in the style of the Tang dynasty, grey and discreet. In front are fields where the 220 nuns who live there cultivate fruit and vegetables. It is the home of Master Cheng Yen, who set up the Foundation in 1966.

“There is a very big difference in managing the two,” he said in an interview. “This is a charity mission, UMC is a business. There I aimed for profit. The sector is very competitive, with challenging technology and high investment. A single most advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) scanner from ASML (in the Netherlands) cost near EUR 400 million and we had to buy several. The cutting edge high-tech sector is like a war. The winner takes all, there is no second life.

“But at Tzu Chi we do not demand a return, we are a charity. Most important is to motivate our volunteers. They go on missions to the most difficult places entirely at their own expense. In most of private sectors, the owners use money to motivate people. Here, we use spiritual values,” he said.

One of the Foundation’s core activities is to send volunteers to deliver aid to places hit by earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters. These are complex and difficult operations, to obtain the necessary approvals and reach places where transport links may be cut off. This year countries it has helped include Turkiye, Kenya, the Philippines, Japan, Myanmar, Nepal, India – and even the United States and China.

Yen said that risk assessment was common in both jobs. “Firms making semi-conductors in Taiwan must prepare for two risks that might stop production. One is earthquake, typhoons or other natural disasters. The other is a possible conflict due to geopolitical tension. That is why Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) is building facilities in Japan, Europe, the U.S. and Singapore.

“Here we must assess the risk for our volunteers going abroad. We must consider political stability, the religious aspect and legal issues like sanctions and laws against money-laundering corruption, terrorism and weapons proliferation. We collect information as much as possible. Master Cheng Yen has a great deal of experience. She decides,” he said.

The overseas expansion of Tzu Chi has been a result of “yin yuan” (因緣, karmic affinities/cause and effect) – a disaster occurs in a country and a Tzu Chi member or Taiwanese there contacts the Foundation. It sends volunteers. Their distribution of economic support and clothing and other services to the community inspires local people who want to join in relief work. A connection is made and the Foundation takes root.

One example is Mozambique in southeast Africa. In 2019, it was devastated by Cyclone Idai. The Foundation sent volunteers from Taiwan and other countries to distribute food and clothing and is currently building four Great Love villages in Sofala Province, central Mozambique, to house more than 3,000 families. Their work attracted the interest of many local people; they joined the relief efforts. The country now counts 9,200 volunteers, in the capital Maputo and the central port city of Beira.

One Taiwanese, Denise Tsai (蔡岱霖), was living in the country. She is married to Dino Foi, then a civil servant who had worked the government of Mozambique. They proposed that the Foundation rebuild schools, many of which had been destroyed by the cyclone. Since Mozambique is a poor country, all the funding would have to come from abroad.

After careful consideration, Master Cheng Yen approved the construction of 23 schools raised from donors in Taiwan and around the world. Yen said that it was very time-consuming to obtain all the necessary approvals. “They were suspicious. Other NGOs had come with big plans and left after building a toilet. In other countries, especially Arab ones, we are suspected of wanting to proselytizing Buddhism. We are not.”

In February this year, President Filipe Nyusi attended the opening of the fourth of the 23 schools; it is the largest secondary school in the country, ESG Mafambisse. Mozambican volunteers have come to Hualien to attend training programmes. Some are learning Mandarin at Tzu Chi University in Hualien.

Yen works seven days a week and receives no salary. He and his wife live in an apartment built for doctors at the Foundation’s hospital in Hualien. His working day runs from 07:30 to 21:30. At UMC, he had the weekends off.

He joined UMC in 1985 and became CEO in 2012. He first had contact with Tzu Chi in 2006 in Singapore, where he was vice president of UMC operations there. His wife introduced him to the branch in the city. Seeing its global relief work, he was moved to join. In 2008 and 2009, he underwent a training programme and become a Commissioner, a certified volunteer.

“We are the arms and legs of Master Cheng Yen. We have a mission. You must transform yourself,” he said.