A, B, and C packages
The TLFB has designed a system of “compassion points” for people to acquire goods. For each distribution day, a household with seven or more persons receives 2000 points, one of four to six persons gets 1500, and homes of three or fewer are allocated 1000 points. In cash terms, each point is worth NT$1 (about 3.3 US cents).
At the central bank, the points required for each product are posted on the shelves, and points are deducted when you check out.
If you pick up your supplies at a distribution station, you can use your points to get three types of premade packages of goods (A, B, or C, from most “expensive” to least). The contents of the packages vary, but all include white rice.
Bright and early on distribution day in June, volunteers from the Xinmin High School Red Cross Youth Service Team are at the TLFB, the boys moving rice, the girls at the checkout counters. All are getting ready for the day to come.
When pick-up time begins, in order to prevent crowding in the facility, at any given time only 10 recipients are allowed in, and each one is accompanied by a guide to help them find their way as they push their shopping carts and select products.
One of the recipients is an 82-year-old woman, living alone, known as Grandma Xu. Wearing a lower back brace, she slowly moves through the aisles and selects several packages of bean thread noodles, wafer cookies, and ready-to-heat packaged meals, which she plops into her shopping cart. The volunteer accompanying her keeps track of her selections on a calculator, deducting each item from Grandma Xu’s 1000 points.
In the “odds and ends” area of the facility, Grandma Xu chooses a cloth puppet and some doll’s clothes, saying without reserve that she is “very happy” to be able to get these. She will give these to an intermediary to deliver to her great-granddaughter.
The day of our visit, the food bank has a selection of “freebie” items, such as bread, pencils, small toys, and reusable water bottles, for which no deduction of points is required. Jeff Chen tells us that these are items that come in irregularly and in small quantities, and the bank simply gives them away.
At that moment Grandma Li, who was the first person to enter the facility, uses up her points and prepares to depart. She says that she will take no rice today: “Things at home are pretty stable right now, so the rice should be left for people who need it more.”
Once each month, tireless and cheerful volunteers from the Chong Zheng Foundation help TLFB to distribute resources in the Taiping District of Taichung City.