The Joy of Service--Volunteerism Takes Off in Taiwan

On the cold winter streets, it's a hot day for contributions to international charitable organizations like World Vision and the Red Cross. Encountering bowing members of the Tzu Chi Foundation, people stop in their tracks to place their personal contributions into donation boxes. Not in a celebratory mood, people thus pass a mournful New Year's Day. Their small acts of kindness are like flames of little candles converging, giving people courage in the depths of winter to wait for the warmth of spring.

The 1999 earthquake in Taiwan aroused the volunteer spirit in people throughout the island, revealing for the first time and in startling numbers the potential that this "people power" can release once stirred into action.

The United Nations General Assembly declared 2001 the "International Year of Volunteers." In January 2001 Taiwan's legislature passed the Volunteer Service Act, making the ROC the second country (after Spain) to promote volunteerism through legislation. President Chen Shui-bian declared May 20 Taiwan Volunteer Day, encouraging people to roll up their sleeves and get involved personally as volunteers.

Wearing comfortable clothing on her day off from the betel-nut stand, Jacky washes stray dogs with fellow volunteers at a shelter.

Volunteerism heats up

According to the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics' Report on Taiwan Area Social Development Trends, in 1999 2.14 million people in Taiwan over age 15 contributed as volunteers, a participation rate of 13.31%. By 2003 the rate had risen to 14.50%. Those figures represent a huge increase over the 5.1% in 1988 and 7.6% in 1994.

Compared to the typical quarter of the population that volunteers in advanced democratic nations, Taiwan still lags a bit. For instance, Japan has a participation rate of 25.3%, Germany 34% and the United States 55.5%.

"But we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves in Taiwan," explains Chen Chin-kuei, chair of the Department of Public Administration and Policy at National Taipei University. "Every country uses a different definition of a volunteer, and ours is very strict. We only include those who have received training from an organization, so the official numbers are naturally on the low side."

Currently, Taiwan has more than 3000 foundations and 23,000 social organizations, which constitute the main pillar of volunteer participation and training. There are also many volunteers who have received neither training nor even a volunteer's guidebook, including more than a million members of the Tzu Chi Foundation, whose system is quite different than those of international organizations. After adding up some of these numbers, Chen Chin-kuei puts the participation rate at over 16%. And the Ministry of the Interior's 2000 report Attitudes of People in Taiwan toward Social Welfare Measures estimates that 25% of the island's people have participated in some sort of volunteer activities.

Purchasing their own airplane tickets to far-off Gambia without complaint, members of the Taiwan Root Medical Peace Corps faced harsh living conditions, a lack of medical resources and long lines of patients. The inner impact of these experiences was harder to cope with than the simple fact of being overworked. (courtesy of Taiwan Root Medical Peace Corps)

Opening windows

Although the total number and age-group demography of Taiwan's volunteers hasn't changed much, the breadth of vision and content of volunteer work has undergone tremendous changes recently, in no small part because international volunteer organizations have worked to transcend national borders and cultures to seek volunteers from every nation.

With this trend, non-profit "third-sector" organizations, as well as individual volunteers, have expanded their horizons to actively build international links and even to establish Asian regional networking centers. Such groups include the International Action and Cooperation Team, the International Association for Volunteer Effort, as well as old players in Taiwan such as the ROC Red Cross (which has just turned 100) and World Vision.

"Volunteer service has become international," Chen points out. "That's the biggest change affecting Taiwan's volunteers," Taiwan's diplomatic efforts are opposed at every turn by mainland China, so "third-sector" organizations not only can represent Taiwan abroad, but they also can travel farther and have a deeper impact.

natural disaster. Volunteers from International Headquarters SAR Taiwan put aside their end-of-year business and promptly flew to affected areas of Thailand, where they helped recover corpses. (courtesy of International Headquarters SAR Taiwan)

Different calls

In 1996 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF) began selecting volunteers for overseas service in nations that have diplomatic relations with the ROC. So far 158 volunteers have served, heading to Africa, Central and South America, the eastern Caribbean and the Asia-Pacific region.

Chang Hsing-yun, 26, was one of them. When Chang was just a baby, there was a fire in her house, but she slept through it soundly and not a hair on her head was harmed, so her father changed her name to Hsing-yun, which means lucky. Three years ago Chang joined a volunteer medical group sponsored by the ICDF, which traveled to Costa Rica to serve a remote native Indian community. Moreover, on her own time and with her own financial resources, she helped establish an elementary school there.

With a Chinese name that means lucky and a Spanish name, Esperanza, that means hope, Chang is a pious Christian who holds that volunteer service represents an "inner calling," something planted in you before you were born.

According to a 2003 survey by the Ministry of the Interior, the motivation of nearly 60% of volunteers is to uphold their religious faith or to do good works. The sacrificial spirit of Christianity and the traditional Chinese notion of accumulating good karma have long been among the most important motivators for encouraging people to do good works.

Other motivations, such as making friends and the belief that "helping others is the source of one's own happiness" also come into play. For Sun Chia-hao, who served at a children's daycare center in Panama, the primary motivation was his "romantic imaginings about the ancient Mayan civilization." Jacky, a "betel-nut beauty" (young seller of betel nuts at a roadside stand), volunteers to help protect stray dogs. She says, "Dogs are more reliable than people." A 76-year-old named Chang, a retired military man, has been assigned by chance to check websites for End Child Prostitution, Taiwan; he says he got involved because the group "didn't object to his being so old." Just as there are 84,000 paths to enlightenment in Buddhism, each passionate volunteer has a different tale to tell. Once entering the realm of volunteer service, each experiences a unique personal journey that combines sadness with joy.

A group of mothers and grandmothers sort garbage for recycling. Middle-aged and elderly women eager to do good works for religious reasons have long been a major source of volunteers in Taiwan.

Leaving civilization's comforts

Leaving the comforts of home to endure hardship and primitive conditions offers the first lesson in the journey of many volunteers.

Established in 1995, the Taiwan Root Medical Peace Corps has long provided regular service to mountainous areas of Taiwan. But in recent years it has started lugging its medicine boxes to far corners of the globe. Facing rampant infectious diseases in backward areas, unstable regimes and roving gangs of bandits, its volunteers for overseas postings (though hiding the reality of these dangers from their families) often take out substantial accident insurance or even make a will.

The difficulties of the living environment are only a superficial obstacle. From the comforts of modern Taiwan, they fall in among people who have no means to a livelihood, in areas where the natural resources have been exhausted. Inside, they are hit hard by surging waves of emotion that they cannot calm.

After seven years of civil war, the entire nation of Liberia had fallen into chaos, its resources damaged and depleted. Shih Liang-feng, a senior volunteer for the Taiwan Root Medical Peace Corps, said that in accordance with the customs in Taiwan, she and her fellow group members told patients to take their medicine before their three daily meals and before they slept. But an impoverished patient told Shih: "I only eat one meal a day. What am I to do?" For a moment the volunteers from Taiwan were at a loss to respond.

In a native tribal village in Costa Rica where malaria was rampant, children had to reach five years of age to escape a high rate of mortality in infancy and early childhood. Then they were promptly given little rain boots and set to work.

Once, Chang Hsing-yun and a patient were chatting. "The patient told me that he had endured great pain in his abdomen to get to the nearest medical station, an eight-day journey. The clinical diagnosis was that he was suffering from acute appendicitis." Chang stops and describes how at that moment she reflected on how many people in Taiwan spend large sums on diet programs. She couldn't help but scream inside about life's unfairness. After the volunteers left, how would these Indians get along?

The more hardship one faces, the more powerless one feels. In particular, it is virtually certain that those volunteers who have gone overseas and are saying their goodbyes after only a short period in a locale are full of inner frustrations and doubts.

natural disaster. Volunteers from International Headquarters SAR Taiwan put aside their end-of-year business and promptly flew to affected areas of Thailand, where they helped recover corpses. (courtesy of International Headquarters SAR Taiwan)

Leaving a mark

In spite of such inner doubts, a minority of volunteers, because of particularly long service or because they are good at using various resources, have gone on to bring about long-term miracles in their localities.

Native Indians account for only 1.7% of Costa Rica's population. Because most of them can't understand Spanish, the language of government, and have not been educated, they have difficulty communicating with the outside world and are frequently cheated when conducting business. Chang Hsing-yun was there only to provide medical services, but during her stint she couldn't help but think to herself: What would help actually these Indians most?

Chang always hoped to do more, and so apart from her medical tours, she also obtained financial support from local Chinese Christian organizations. This support had its origins in two years during which Chang would drive for three hours on the weekends to teach Mandarin to the children of local overseas Chinese. With the help of the tribal elders, she found a local who was fluent both in the local language and Spanish. With this translator, the Indians were able to communicate with the outside world, employ basic math to conduct trade, and continue using their own language to preserve their culture. Many people had given them things before, but no one had ever built them a school. Chang changed the village's fate by giving them something they truly need-an inextinguishable light of hope.

Meanwhile, a chain of accidents led Sun Chia-hao, who was searching for Mayan culture, to Panama. There, he served at Ciudad del Nino, a daycare center that takes children from poor single-parent families earning less than US$1 a day, so that their mothers can go and learn job skills. In order to raise the children's passion for learning, Sun used the Internet to ask for donations of computers from Taiwan, and Ciudad del Nino was thus able to establish a computer classroom, which helps to cultivate the children's basic skills in math and logic. After he had completed his term of service and returned to Taiwan, he established the Young Explorer and Maker Association, which finds volunteers to go to Panama so that computer education at Ciudad del Nino can continue unimpeded.

Motivation to serve as volunteers source: Social Development Trends, DGBAS

Three parts skill, seven parts feeling

For volunteers, there is no greater source of satisfaction than making important contributions in a foreign country, while expanding their horizons and breadth of skills. Yet many have romantic images of volunteer work, and when they encounter lazy local bureaucrats, ignorant local residents and limited resources, they find it hard not to get angry and feel their passion start to ebb away.

Kao Hsiao-ling, head of the Technical Cooperation Department of the ICDF, has encountered many volunteers who have ended their service overseas early out of frustration. "Those who adjust best to life as an overseas volunteer are those who are able to put benefiting themselves in a proper balance with benefiting others," she explains. Those who are only concerned about what they themselves can get out of it, or about the service they are providing others, are more likely to get into difficulties and find it hard to adjust. But the more broadminded a volunteer, so that he or she doesn't hold excessive expectations, the more they are able to happily complete their term of service.

In a lot of situations, the volunteers serve as little more than strangers bearing gifts for the long-suffering locals. If the volunteers, as guests, try to turn the tables and act like hosts or go even farther and try to affix saviors' halos to their own heads, not only will this damage the locals' self-respect, but it will also cause the volunteers to feel very frustrated themselves. Therefore, Tzu Chi volunteers refer to those they are helping as "households for which we are grateful." They hope that volunteers will cast off attitudes of superiority, and "be thankful for those who have given them an opportunity to serve." Nuns working at a hospice in India have only the barest personal necessities for belongings, intentionally keeping themselves very poor, so that they treat their indigent patients as equals.

Showing the same consideration and respect, Sun Chia-hao didn't chew gum, use facial tissue or wear brand-name clothes or a watch at Ciudad del Nino.

"All those things were luxuries in the local culture," Sun explains, "and I wanted to become close to the children and avoid being regarded as different."

Participation rates by age group source: Social Development Trends, DGBAS

Compassion and knowledge

Apart from treating people with love and respect, truly treating those you are serving as equals requires fine adjustments in attitude and constant give and take.

"Is what you are offering really what locals need? You've really got to think about it long and hard," says Liu Hsiang-mei, who reminds passionate volunteers that not only should they strive "to use both compassion and knowledge" but that "knowledge" should lead "compassion."

Before she helped to build a school in the Indian village, she thought about the danger she faced every time she crossed a river, through which the Indian women happily carried their children. Chang originally wanted to get a Taiwanese engineering service group to build a bridge. Much to her surprise, the Indians all responded negatively to that idea, because they didn't have any problem crossing the river and thought that a bridge would look ugly there.

"It gave me pause for thought," she says. "As outsiders who don't really understand the local culture, volunteers are just temporarily there providing service. You can't put on airs and impose your way of thinking on the people you are serving."

natural disaster. Volunteers from International Headquarters SAR Taiwan put aside their end-of-year business and promptly flew to affected areas of Thailand, where they helped recover corpses. (courtesy of International Headquarters SAR Taiwan)

Silent current of warmth

Because there is a great difference between living standards in Taiwan and third-world nations, aid groups going abroad always attract a good deal of curiosity. Yet here at home, there are likewise moving stories about volunteers. In recent years, with the efforts of the Tzu Chi Foundation, World Vision and other public interest groups, the volunteer spirit has infected all of Taiwan. How to go about serving others and thereby help reduce social hardships has suddenly become many people's dream.

Born to a wealthy family, Chen Yu-ting was loved and well cared for from a young age. When he was in middle school, his mother was still tying his shoelaces. His parents and grandparents ran a store together in Sanchung, and he grew up amid the world of business, where "when you put something out, you expect a return." When Chen graduated from college, he found work in a manufacturing plant. But after seeing the people and machines go through their motions day after day, and spending his days concerned about job performance based on sales, he began to have doubts about the meaning of life. Without telling his family, he joined the Creation Social Welfare Foundation and started going to the homes of comatose patients to help nurse them.

Now Chen works in the homes of comatose patients two days a week. Even if the patients will never be able to open their mouths to express thanks, he feels great satisfaction when a patient takes on a more gentle and relaxed expression after he massages them. Once, covered with sweat after giving a massage, he remarked: "Ah! Going to a patient's house is like going to the gym!" It brought a smile to the face of a member of the family who had had tears in her eyes.

"Allowing a poor and sick family that has been cruelly treated by fate to laugh a little-that joy represents top marks for job performance in my book," Chen says. "It's a totally different kind of happiness from what one gets by competing with others."

Working for two years at Ciudad del Nino, a daycare center in Panama, Sun Chia-hao never wore a watch or used facial tissues to wipe his mouth. He didn't want to create distance between himself and the children, who came from poor families. (courtesy of Sun Chia-hao)

Planting seeds of benevolence

Volunteer service is an ideal mode of interpersonal communication that transcends national boundaries. It fosters social ties and gives one a sense of belonging. It instills a belief that giving is its own reward, and it sets an example for the rest of society. By increasing the level of trust between people, you can actively lower anxiety levels, and crime rates too.

Since the two-day weekend in Taiwan went into effect in 1998, the average worker's leisure time has increased by 200 hours a year. Moreover, with the aging of the population and earlier retirements, many people are still in their prime but are without work. This large wave of highly educated retirees has greatly expanded the number of full-time volunteers. Stan Shih, the former CEO of Acer Computers who has formally turned over the reins there, has decided to use his ample experience to serve the public good. With people of his ilk joining the ranks of volunteers, the types of service have increased and their scope has broadened.

For many years, women in the 30-45 age group were the driving force of the volunteer population, comprising more than one-third of all volunteers. Today, the elderly, once regarded as a chief target of volunteer services, and youngsters, who used to participate least of all, are joining in record numbers. This is due to social change and a new conception of service. Many volunteers, moreover, have spread their willingness to participate to their whole family, with children learning about volunteer service from parents. The era of "general mobilization of the population" has arrived.

At busy intersections, loving mothers are directing children across the street. When a fire alarm rings, a volunteer fireman, who works another regular job, jumps into action at the scene of the blaze. Hands on a steering wheel, a taxi driver lovingly picks up and lets off a patient going for dialysis, as if he were his personal driver. After changing out of their office clothes, engineers head toward the National Museum of Natural Science to serve as docents. Putting aside the status he once had, a retired school principal works in a library quietly putting books back on the shelves....

Over human history, technology, culture, national systems and social customs have constantly been changing. Yet people never stop seeking goodness. The ideas of helping others so as to build one's own karma, or of neighbors helping each other out, have been made new again-for they aren't relics of a bygone age, but rather eternal duties and hopes.

Participation rates source: Social Development Trends, DGBAS