Update Information You Should Know III

Putting Compassion into Action

Taiwan Review
Publication Date：11/01/2009
By line：KELLY HER

Non-governmental organizations have played an important role in assisting Taiwan in its recovery from devastating Typhoon Morakot.

At 6:30 a.m. on August 9 this year, Su Chow-ching, an officer at the Taipei-based Chang Yung-fa Charity Foundation under the Evergreen Group, was awoken by a call from a section chief at the Social Affairs Department of the Chiayi County Government. The man was asking for emergency assistance for the county, saying that the torrential rain brought by Typhoon Morakot two days earlier had triggered serious flooding in some areas, cutting off transportation routes and leaving residents trapped in towns with few food supplies.

Su then called his colleagues and by 8 a.m. they had set off for Chiayi in southern Taiwan to assess the situation first hand. The high-speed railway train that they took was unexpectedly stopped in Taichung, central Taiwan, however, due to the deteriorating conditions caused by the storm. They were thus forced to rent a car and take the highway, driving in strong winds and heavy rain, but they eventually managed to reach their destination.

After learning of the most pressing needs of affected residents, Su relayed the information to the foundation’s executives back in Taipei, who immediately contacted the group’s affiliated company, Evergreen Sky Catering Corp., which is primarily tasked with preparing meals for international airlines. The catering company provided 4,500 meal boxes and another affiliate, Evergreen International Storage and Transport Corp., arranged deliveries to Chiayi County.

Meanwhile, the foundation dispatched several teams to other typhoon-ravaged areas further south including Tainan, Kaohsiung, Pingtung and Taitung counties, to check conditions and look into their needs. Based on their findings, the group sent out a variety of relief goods including bread and meals the following day, and blankets, cleaning products, daily necessities like towels and tissue paper, drinking water and clothing within the next few days.

Private Sector Support

In addition, given that rail and road traffic between Kaohsiung and Taitung was seriously disrupted, another of the group’s affiliates, Uni Air, provided charter flights to transport rescue and medical workers and relief supplies free of charge.

Plus, the Evergreen Group, which also includes the world’s fourth largest container shipping company, Evergreen Marine Corp., donated NT$420 million (US$12.7 million), while its chairman Chang Yung-fa personally donated another NT$100 million (US$3 million).

“We utilized our group’s resources for disaster relief on a comprehensive scale that covered land, sea and air networks,” says Chen Li-hua, executive director of the Chang Yung-fa Charity Foundation. “And we opted to address survivors’ immediate as well as long-term needs and assist in post-disaster reconstruction. We take relief work, or rather, charity work, to be our business so we emphasize accuracy, speed and efficiency, as well as fulfilling our social responsibility.” The foundation has not set limits on the amount of time or support it will provide, saying it will continue for as long as the need exists among survivors.


Volunteers of the Tzu Chi Foundation offer comfort to an elderly couple affected by the typhoon. (Courtesy of Tzu Chi Foundation)
The Chang Yung-fa Charity Foundation was one of the many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that reacted quickly to carry out relief work after Typhoon Morakot unleashed the island’s worst flooding in half a century.

Taiwan Root Medical Peace Corps (TRMPC) was another, leading teams of physicians, nurses, pharmacists, medical technologists and logistics volunteers to Nantou, Pingtung and Taitung counties in central and southern Taiwan to treat survivors for injuries ranging from lacerations, skin infections and bone fractures to psychological trauma. Teams from TRMPC traveled in four-wheel-drive vehicles taking any viable route including back roads and long detours, in some cases traveling more than double the usual distance, to reach remote sites.

“The areas hit hard by the typhoon, mostly aboriginal villages in remote mountain regions, are the places that our medical teams have paid regular visits to over the past 15 years,” says Liu Chi-chun, president of TRMPC. “We were saddened to see those roads that we’d become so familiar with were severely damaged, leaving local inhabitants isolated and helpless. Still, we’re doing our best to go to the rescue of people most in need regardless of any difficulties.”

Gu Guang-hua, the village chief of Renai Township of Nantou County, says whenever there is heavy rainfall, his village’s external transportation routes are cut off. If a villager falls ill or is injured during these periods, it is impossible to get to Puli Christian Hospital, the nearest medical facility, which is about two hours away via winding mountain roads. “Medical care is really a problem here. We’re grateful to TRMPC for traveling such a long way to provide us with medical services,” Gu says. “I’ve received calls from several NGOs, asking about our condition and what we need. There are a lot of kind-hearted people around.”

Other charitable groups that offered disaster relief were the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation, the Dharma Drum Mountain Social Welfare and Charity Foundation, the Red Cross Society of the Republic of China, World Vision Taiwan and the Eden Social Welfare Foundation, just to name a few.

Lai Rei-ling, a specialist at the Humanitarian Development Department of the Tzu Chi Foundation, says as soon as the Central Weather Bureau issues a land warning for an approaching typhoon, Tzu Chi reminds local community members to take preventative measures and sets up emergency coordination centers at its branch offices across Taiwan to prepare for any emergency. Such a mechanism was formed in the wake of Super Typhoon Herb, which caused severe destruction in Taiwan in 1996.

As such, soon after Typhoon Morakot closed in on Taiwan and began causing damage, Tzu Chi started to get related information from its nationwide network of volunteers with a number of them residing in the mountainous regions hit hard by the powerful storm.

Tzu Chi volunteers wasted no time in preparing and distributing hot meals, blankets, relief kits containing a towel, toothbrush, toothpaste, soap and instant rice, together with emergency cash ranging from NT$5,000–$10,000 (US$152–$303) per household, to the affected families in disaster areas. Medical staff from six Tzu Chi hospitals were flown in to remote districts by helicopter and also traveled to temporary shelters to care for the frail, sick and injured.

The foundation organized several ceremonies to pray for blessings and visited affected residents in their homes or in temporary shelters and hospitals to offer comfort. It also worked with Tzu Chi broadcaster Da Ai Television to host a live fundraising program on August 16, which was extended for three days due to the enthusiastic participation of celebrities, entrepreneurs and government officials and continuous donations from home and abroad.

Furthermore, Tzu Chi assisted with the environmental cleanup and offered emotional and spiritual care to survivors as well as rescue workers including soldiers and police officers. Nearly 140,000 Tzu Chi volunteers from all over Taiwan joined disaster relief efforts in various roles.

Lai Rei-ling says she was touched by the enthusiastic participation of volunteers from different cultural, economic and religious backgrounds. “When we set out on trips to the south to help affected families clean up their homes, we normally left Taipei by 6 a.m. Volunteers even had to pay their own transportation fees and take along their own lunch box and cleaning tools,” she adds.

Acts of Benevolence

“Also, many business owners told us that we could take whatever and as much of anything we needed from their shops for relief supplies. The disaster was terrible, but on the other hand, it encouraged enormous acts of benevolence,” Lai says.


World Vision Taiwan is working closely with local governments to build environmentally friendly transitional houses for affected families in Taitung, Pingtung, Kaohsiung and Chiayi counties. (Courtesy of World Vision Taiwan)
Many of those who suffered during the flooding were underprivileged indigenous families. The mountain areas that many tribes relied on for a living were destroyed and many homes totally wiped out. Thus, providing permanent housing is imperative for these victims. In its long-term efforts to help survivors and evacuees resettle, Tzu Chi has moved to assess possible locations and draft blueprints for building permanent houses.

To that end, Tzu Chi has offered its services to build permanent houses for victims based on advanced construction techniques from the United States and Canada that can complete a structure in one month at a cost of just NT$1 million (US$30,300). Lai hopes the government can provide land and help to smooth regulatory procedures in order to speed up the foundation’s building projects. She says the foundation will also take into account each tribe’s aesthetics, culture and customs in housing plans as well as set aside sites for tribal culture centers, churches and sports fields.

“We simply do what we should do and hope our endeavors can complement the government’s, while also letting the government have more time to think about and deal with other important matters,” Lai says. “NGOs need to work hand in hand with the government to maximize the efficiency of relief operations.” She hopes that all Taiwanese citizens and government officials can learn from this catastrophe by giving more attention to environmental protection and disaster prevention and mitigation.

World Vision Taiwan was another NGO that actively took part in relief and reconstruction activities in storm-stricken areas. Besides distributing food, cleaning materials and emergency relief money to affected households in Pingtung and Taitung counties, the Christian charity coordinated with several churches, temples and schools to offer about 30 temporary shelters to some 5,000 survivors. It also set up “child friendly spaces” with teachers on hand to play with affected children in hopes of using activities to help them deal with the psychological trauma of their experiences.

Helping Families

Hank Du, executive director of World Vision Taiwan, says his organization is striving to promote a child sponsorship program to provide educational assistance and living subsidies for children affected by the typhoon. It is also working closely with local governments to build transitional houses for affected families in Taitung, Pingtung, Kaohsiung and Chiayi counties until more stable and permanent houses are constructed. The homes, Du says, are made of construction materials that are environmentally friendly and reusable and can be assembled by untrained personnel with simple hand tools and completed in three weeks.

ShelterBox, a British charity organization, also donated 324 kits, which include a tent and relief supplies, to World Vision through Rotary International to provide additional temporary housing.

“We’ve served indigenous families for more than four decades and we have many locals on staff. We understand their needs and cultures, so of course we’ll respect their ideas and wishes when building new homes and invite them to participate in the construction work,” Du says. “The major issue is not about housing, but people. We must make sure the precious assets of indigenous cultures and traditions can be properly conserved in the process of reconstruction or the relocation of villages.”

Flood Protection

The powerful storm, Du says, exposed the lack of a uniform command system that caused confusion between central and local authorities. He says Taiwan set up a number of natural disaster response systems following the major earthquake in 1999, but these measures were mainly aimed at earthquakes, and the nation still has much to learn about hydrology and formulating plans to protect against dangerous flooding in the future.

In addition to the initial stages of the relief efforts, World Vision Taiwan plans to invest more than NT$1.2 billion (US$36.4 million) in long-term rehabilitation programs to help those affected return to normal life as soon as possible.

Chen Charng-ven, president of the Red Cross Society of the ROC, says the compassion demonstrated by members of the general public for Typhoon Morakot victims has been extraordinary. For example, his organization had raised an unprecedented NT$3.5 billion (US$106 million) in donations by early September.

The Red Cross president says the society will make good use of the donations and, in addition to the NT$95 million (US$3 million) the society has already spent in emergency rescue and relief, it has earmarked approximately NT$3 billion (US$90 million) for reconstruction work. About NT$2.5 billion of that amount will be used to build 1,800 temporary houses and 1,600 permanent residences to help accommodate typhoon survivors.

The group plans to use another NT$405 million (US$12 million) over the next few years for community revitalization projects including local economic, cultural and educational development .

Chen says his organization will help survivors move into the temporary housing as soon as possible. With the help of local governments to ensure land availability and property rights, it could complete the construction of permanent housing within 12 to 18 months, he adds.

The path to reconstruction remains long and challenging. Nevertheless, numerous efforts are under way to help Taiwan recover from the effects of Typhoon Morakot. “It is truly heartbreaking to see the devastation caused by the floods,” says Master Cheng Yen, the founder of the Tzu Chi Foundation. “At the same time, it is truly heartwarming to see so many rescue workers and volunteers taking part in relief and reconstruction work.”

“Hope comes from helping each other,” she says. “Disasters will pass, but love and hope remain forever.”