Taipei, July 19 (CNA) Tang Prize Foundation CEO Chern Jenn-chuan (陳振川) left for South Africa and Kenya on Sunday to promote the Tang Prize, Taiwan's equivalent of the Nobel Prize, through the donations of two Tang Prize laureates.
Chern and his entourage will begin by participating in the launch of the Albie Sachs Trust for Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law, a trust established by former South African judge Albie Sachs who won the first Tang Prize for the Rule of Law.
The trust is aimed at signing up heavyweights in the global legal sector to promote recognition and respect for the rule of law, human rights and constitutions.
Sachs, 80, has decided to donate his research grant of NT$10 million (US$321 million) awarded by the Tang Prize Foundation to compile documents about the Constitution of South Africa to provide documented knowledge of the country's constitutional process for people of the next generation.
On behalf of the Tang Prize Foundation, Chern will sign a memorandum of agreement with the Albie Sachs' trust on the use of the NT$10 million research grant.
The Tang Prize Foundation representatives will then visit a conservation zone in northern Nairobi operated by the Milgis Trust -- a Kenyan non-profit organization that protects the wildlife, habitat and pastoral peoples' way of life in this remote part of northern Kenya -- from July 24 to 27.
The Tang Prize Foundation will ink a memorandum of agreement with the Milgis Trust on the use of a NT$5 million research grant donated by Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former Norwegian prime minister who won the first Tang Prize in Sustainable Development.
Chern will also deliver keynote speeches at the University of Cape Town and the Institute for Climate Change and Adaptation at the University of Nairobi to discuss Taiwan's experiences in post-disaster reconstruction and to promote the Tang Prize.
Established in 2012 by Taiwanese entrepreneur Samuel Yin (尹衍樑), the Tang Prize is a set of biennial international awards bestowed in four categories: sustainable development, biopharmaceutical science, Sinology and the rule of law.
Winners of the award are selected by panels of judges convened by Academia Sinica, Taiwan's top research institution. The panels comprise prominent researchers and scholars from Taiwan and abroad, including Nobel laureates.
(By Lo Kuang-jen and Jeffrey Wu)
