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Radical kindness: the banker who gave it all away
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of The Age (One of Australia's leading newspapers)
Posted: September 9th, 2014
http://www.theage.com.au/national/radical-kindness-the-banke...
Philip Wollen, at first glance, does not look like a radical. Wollen is a former merchant banker. He was a vice-president of Citibank when he was 34, and a general manager at Citicorp. Australian Business Magazine named him one of the top 40 headhunted executives in Australia. But about 1990 he is not exactly sure of the year Wollen decided to give away 90 per cent of his capital, a process he describes as "reverse tithing". Since then Wollen has donated millions to improving the environment and helping the powerless children, animals and the terminally ill around the world. He sponsors the anti-whaling vessel the Sea Shepherd and the South Australian Children's Ballet Company, and has built schools, orphanages, lion parks and sanctuaries. His Winsome Constance Kindness Trust supports more than 400 projects in 40 countries. Wollen says his aim is to die broke, to give away all he owns with "warm hands", and that he is on track to do so. Mostly he does his work away from the public gaze. The trust's website says "we don't want your money", and its mission statement is ambitious: "to promote kindness towards all other living beings and enshrine it as a recognisable trait in the Australian character and consciousness." [Wollen] agrees with philosopher Peter Singer that animal rights pose "the greatest moral issue facing humanity since the abolition of slavery".
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