Recent disasters have caused donations to concentrate solely on such incidents, draining funds that could be used to help disadvantaged people, social welfare groups said.
Severe disasters have, to a degree, affected fundraising efforts, Down Syndrome Foundation social welfare promotion division chief Chou Mei-ju (周美汝) said, adding that the foundation saw a 20 percent drop in fundraising income last year.
Less than 10 percent of students graduating from a special education program are able to find jobs each year, Chou said, adding that it has started workshops teaching them how to make soaps or jewelry cases so that they would have additional skills.
The foundation was planning to start another workshop to help people with Down syndrome in the first half of this year, but it might have to push that plan back to the second half of the year, Chou said.
Chou said that, although the workshop will be opened no matter what, it might have to be scaled down or have less equipment to help cut expenses.
“We might have to look for corporate assistance to enable the establishment of two workshops per foundation,” Chou said.
Taiwan Foundation for Rare Disorders founder Chen Li-yin (陳莉茵) said that it saw a decrease of 20 percent in fundraising income, adding that the amount of donations has dwindled, while the number of donors remained stable.
“We are still extremely thankful that donors are continuing to help us, and, to compensate for the drop in donations, we have informed those we aid and their families to try and share resources or avoid excessive use,” Chen said.
The director-general of the Loving Blind Association, Michelle Lin (林孟雪), said that it has set aside a sum of money that enables it to help hundreds of people every year pay for cornea transplants and treatment for macular degeneration.
“If the situation with fundraising continues, we will have to rely more on long-term investments from corporations,” Lin said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift