The Tzu Chi Foundation is a globally immersed Chinese Buddhist humanitarian organization that is originated and based in Taiwan. It was founded in 1999 by the Buddhist nun Cheng Yen and is a volunteer organization that provides aid to roughly 70 nations worldwide.

The foundation is present in all of the world’s five major continents and maintains offices in 47 different countries.

The organization’s website clearly delineates its goals and mission. The group’s four expressed goals are referred to as its “Four Major Missions” of charity, medical help and attention, education and humanity. It also focuses on four other venues: bone marrow donation efforts, environmental considerations, community volunteering and international relief.

Their four goals combine with these considerations to form “Tzu Chi’s Eight Footprints.”

Tzu Chi maintains consultative relations with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. Its members are often referred to as “blue angels” due to their signature blue uniforms. The group has built numerous villages, nursing homes, schools and hospitals across the world. It also maintains the Tzu Chi International Medical Association, which includes professional doctors who travel in times of international disaster to provide medical relief to victims.

The group also acted closer to home than many U.S. citizens may know or think. After Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of New York and New Jersey, Tzu Chi members personally dispersed $10 million total in $300 and $600 Visa credit gift cards to victims in the area.

Its efforts abroad are plentiful and very personalized, illustrating an admirable method of involved humanitarianism. For example, after the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, China, Tzu Chi members brought blankets, nourishment and medical aid to the disaster-stricken area. The group also focuses on very impoverished areas in China and elsewhere, distributing rice, oil, blankets, clothes and medical services to those in need.

The organization ignores ethnic, religious, national or racial boundaries or restrictions, but instead spreads Buddhist principles of morality, kindness, humanism and selflessness. Furthermore, they provide both instant and long-term infrastructural solutions to community problems throughout the world.

Tzu Chi is making a difference one blue angel at a time.

– Arielle Swett

Sources: Tzu Chi, The Register