The Sacred Heart Home for Severely Retarded Youth held the first viewing of a new commercial created by famous local director Wu Nien-jen (吳念真) in Taipei yesterday and asked the public to donate funds toward the building of its new long-term care facility.
The center, located in Chiayi, was founded in 1980 by Father Francis Burkhardt, and accepts individuals from the ages 5 to 50 with multiple moderate-to-severe mental and physical disabilities for live-in and daytime care.
To expand on its founding principle to "accept those that society cannot or will not accept," the center is hoping to raise over US$3.55 million for its Francis Garden, a new building addition which will play home to over 200 clients. There, daytime and live-in clients will receive skills training, physical and mental therapy. The distinguishing feature of the Francis Garden, said center head Liu Chen-wang (
Sister Kao Hui-lin (高慧琳), center director before Liu, said that a couple of years ago, they began thinking of establishing a life-long care system when they realized the serious need for such a service.
One such case that helped inspire the Francis Garden was that of 57-year-old "Shiao Min," whose mother died a couple of years ago.
Father Burkhardt realized that such worries were common for the families of their clients and told Kao that the center needed to do something to lay the families' worries to rest.
"When we took him to see his mom, we reassured her that we would always look after Shiao Min," Kao said.
"We found out later that she died a couple of days after we went, so you can tell that she had been holding on to life out of worry for her son."
The center hopes to raise the needed amount of money by 2007.
A TV advertisement will premiere on cable TV channels Era TV and GTV next week, center representatives said.
To learn more about the center, call at (05)-3795465. To donate money towards the Francis Garden, wire funds to the center's account called "The Sacred Heart Home for Severely Retarded Youth" at the Chunghwa Post Co's banking division, account number 30145981.
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
IN FULL SWING: Recall drives against lawmakers in Hualien, Taoyuan and Hsinchu have reached the second-stage threshold, the campaigners said Campaigners in a recall petition against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) in Taichung yesterday said their signature target is within sight, and that they need a big push to collect about 500 more signatures from locals to reach the second-stage threshold. Recall campaigns against KMT lawmakers Johnny Chiang (江啟臣), Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) and Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) are also close to the 10 percent threshold, and campaigners are mounting a final push this week. They need about 800 signatures against Chiang and about 2,000 against Yang. Campaigners seeking to recall Lo said they had reached the threshold figure over the
RSS