SHENZHEN, China, Sept. 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Tencent's annual philanthropic campaign – "99 Giving Day" – kicks off on September 7th this year with a focus on public participation, inclusion and transparency. The three-day donation initiative comes at a time when social welfare is more important than ever for holding together and supporting each other as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to affect people from all walks of life.
This year's event is highlighted by the participation of 18 internet companies including Kuaishou, Bilibili, Pinduoduo, JD.com and Didi Chuxing forming an alliance in the spirit of "Together we can." Online donations have also been redesigned to include new features such as issuing consumption vouchers and using live streaming during the fund-raising process. These efforts are aimed at integrating charitable behavior into daily life scenarios such as consumption, cultural activities, social networking and coronavirus prevention awareness.
Tencent Charity Foundation, the philanthropic unit of the company, will use 299.99 million yuan of funds to match donations from the public. An additional 100 million yuan will be donated as a non-targeted charitable contribution. This marks Tencent's sixth year leading the charity campaign, connecting hundreds of thousands of NGOs, enterprises and different sectors of the community for joint participation.
"99 Giving Day in the post-pandemic period stands at a new starting point, as social welfare faces new opportunities and challenges," says Charles CHEN Yidan, main founder of Tencent and the initiator and honorary chairman of the Tencent Charity Foundation. "Tencent will take advantage of the power of technologies, partnering with more charitable organizations to promote transparency, digitization and improve the eco-efficiency of social philanthropy."
In addition, Tencent will allocate 200 million yuan of funds from its Anti-Pandemic Funds to help social welfare organizations recover from the epidemic, favoring those with a proven track record, as well as outstanding performance in this year's campaign. Tencent announced a USD100 million Global Anti-Pandemic Fund in March to support international efforts against Covid-19. Prior to that, the company also announced a 1.5 billion yuan domestic fund to help fight the epidemic.
As the largest of its kind in China, the 99 Giving Day campaign was created by Tencent from the ground up. As of September 5th, 2020, Tencent Charity Foundation's social welfare online donation platform has attracted more than 356 million donations, and raised over 9 billion yuan of funds, benefiting more than 92,000 social welfare programs.
Tech for Good
Since its debut in 2015, the 99 Giving Day campaign has been committed to using technology to amplify and guard the goodwill of donors, and to enhance the transparency and efficiency of public welfare activities. At the launch ceremony of 99 Giving Day this year, Tencent's Chen said that the company will provide more technological support to internet-based charities based on three tenets: transparency, digitization and ecological efficiency.
Transparency is the foundation of a healthy philanthropic ecosystem, as well a cornerstone in supporting sustainable development of the industry. To this end, all projects this year will utilize blockchain technology to ensure data traceability.
"Tencent has gained extensive experience in the application of blockchain technology, such as in the tax field. Blockchain has the power to make social welfare initiatives more transparent and more digitalized. There will be no need to worry about issues like 'data tampering'," explained Ge Yan, secretary-general of Tencent Charity Foundation, expressing her confidence in the application of blockchain technology in online charity activities.
In fulfilling the corporate mission of "Value for Users, Tech for Good", Tencent also launched a tech support platform this year to help charity partners better leverage digital capabilities in implementing philanthropy projects. The Chinese internet giant announced a "Public Welfare SaaS Project" to open up some internal technologies to outside partners through open-source cooperation, in an initiative to digitalize and move projects to the "Cloud". According to the latest statistics, 50 organizations have already joined the partnership. The number is expected to exceed 100 by the end of this year.
Tencent "is not only committed to social welfare by itself, it is also actively helping others to do so. I think this is of great value," said Zhang Boli, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Tencent organized internal volunteers to support the development of epidemic prevention apps, online tools and other public service projects to enhance public service partners' capabilities in epidemic relief. Tencent Charity Foundation vows to utilize the experience of the volunteers as a model to build a "digital philanthropy mutual-aid platform".
Tencent Charity Foundation will continue its contributions to digital philanthropy mutual-aid projects, so that advanced technology can be leveraged to create improved digital solutions for social issues, and boost the ecosystem efficiency of the philanthropy industry, said Tencent's Chen.
