Sixty-seven-year-old Huang Chu-yu (黃祝敔), who was homeless when he accepted a free lunch at an annual charity event a year ago, yesterday attended the event again, this time not as a guest, but as a volunteer helping with the year-end feast held in the plaza outside the Presidential Office Building in Taipei.
Huang was among 6,000 volunteers serving about 40,000 socially disadvantaged people at 16 charity weiyas nationwide yesterday. A weiya is an annual year-end banquet that in Taiwan is traditionally held ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday. Companies usually organize a weiya to thank employees for their contributions.
The annual charity weiya Huang attended was organized by the Genesis Social Welfare Foundation and its two sister groups, the Jen’an Homeless Social Welfare Foundation and the Huashan Social Welfare Foundation.
Photo: Tsai Tsung-hsun, Taipei Times
The event has been held annually since 1996 to treat low-income families, homeless people, older people living alone and single mothers and their children to a meal ahead of Lunar New Year’s Day, which this year falls on Saturday.
“It is more blessed to give than to receive,” Huang said about his new role.
He encouraged homeless people to be optimistic and enterprising.
Huang became homeless after losing his job three years ago.
During the day, he would try to get part-time work at construction sites, earning as little as NT$1,000 per day, while at night, he would sleep on a bench or on the ground in a park, he said.
Huang said he often sat on the ground in his “home” at a park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), “feeling lost in life.”
His difficulties peaked in January last year, when a powerful cold front hit Taiwan.
After returning to the park he called home after a day of work, he found that all his belongings, packed in a plastic bag, had been cleared away as garbage, he said.
That night, he wrapped himself in a thin blanket.
That was when volunteers from the Jen’an foundation spotted him and gave him a sleeping bag to keep warm, Huang said.
With the assistance of Jen’an foundation volunteers, he began a small business selling brown sugar cakes, Huang said, adding that he eventually earned enough money to rent a small residence for himself, his ex-wife and their daughter.
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