“A home away from home” is the feeling that the Community Services Center wants its patrons to feel when they visit the cozy two-story space nestled in the quiet residential area of Shilin (士林) in Taipei City.
About a 10 to 15 minute walk from the Zhishan and Mingde MRT stations, the center has become a must-go place for many expats wanting useful information, ranging from where to go for Indian food, where to find mental health counseling services to newcomer orientations.
Steve Parker, an Australian who was recently installed as the center’s director, stressed that it is open to everyone and is not merely an esoteric club exclusively for the expat community.
“The counseling aspect is really the core of the services that our center offers,” he said.
All eight counselors were trained in the West and have at minimum master’s degrees and five years of clinical experience. Moreover, all the counselors are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to respond to crisis situations. The languages spoken among them include English, Mandarin, Hoklo and Filipino.
One of the counselors, Perry Malcolm, said he has seen all sorts of issues come through the center in the last eight years.
“We deal with a host of issues, including adjustment problems, mood swings, depression, anxiety, children’s learning difficulties, marital and relationship issues and sometimes even alcoholism,” he said, adding counselors also provide crisis intervention services for those with suicidal thoughts.
Echoing Parker, Malcolm said the counseling service is the raison d’etre for the center and all the other aspects, such as survival Chinese language training, are augmentations of it.
“All the other services are here to hopefully keep people out of counseling, because when people learn to speak the language or establish connections with other people, they have an easier time getting used to their new environment,” Malcolm said.
All counseling fees are set on a sliding scale, depending on each person’s income and ability to pay.
One of the most popular activities the center offers is the Wednesday Coffee Morning, where anyone is welcome to sit on the big plush couch and chat with friends old and new as they nibble on snacks and sip coffee, he said.
“When people feel connected, it is easier for them get used to their new surroundings,” Malcolm said.
Another key in getting over transition blues, he said, is not to give oneself undue stress and learn to let go of preconceptions.
The center also hosts a workplace workshop to teach people how to deal with diversity in their working life, such as how to work with Western professionals and, for Western managers, how to better understand their Taiwanese colleagues, Parker said.
Visitors can also sign up for events and classes, such as Mexican cooking, yoga, Pilates, flower arranging, scrapbook keeping and even computer skills that are taught by people from within the community.
On the center’s bookshelves, besides novels and tourist books, one can find US college prep guides and booklets on how to cast absentee ballots in US elections.
“The center is really an excellent source of information. It is a shortcut for newcomers who have just arrived in Taiwan. [We] condense different people’s experiences, distill the information, then pass it on to others,” Barker said.
See www.community.com.tw for more information. The monthly magazine Centered on Taipei is in major bookstores along with the center’s other publications, including a Taipei living guide and an easy at-a-glance map of the capital.
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