About one-quarter of vulnerable families served by the Taiwan Fund for Children and Families (TFCF) have been financially affected since the start of a domestic COVID-19 outbreak in May, the organization said yesterday.
The incomes of 6,959 families supported by the group were impacted by a nationwide level 3 COVID-19 alert, which lasted from May 19 to July 26, it said.
As of the end of December last year, the organization was serving 60,766 children from 27,530 economically disadvantaged families, including 46,770 children who were receiving financial aid from the fund, according to its Web site.
The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced many changes as well as challenges and difficulties to people’s lives, jobs and well-being, TFCF social resources department director Lin Hsiu-feng (林秀鳳) told an online news conference.
The fund’s social workers have made frequent telephone and video calls to stay in contact with the children, adolescents and families it assists, she said.
Tutoring lessons offered by the group have also moved online, she added.
Amid the outbreak, the fund gave out NT$26 million (US$933,640) in emergency relief to families, she said.
It also provided 2,800 tablet computers to meet a shortage of devices needed by students for digital learning, she said.
From January to June, donations to the organization’s emergency relief, student aid and scholarship funds have experienced a deficit of about NT$51 million, she said.
Compared with the same period last year, this was a decrease of about 35 percent, she said.
As school is about to start on Sept. 1, children supported by the fund would be faced with even more challenges, she said, urging people to donate to the organization’s End Poverty campaign.
An online survey TFCF released yesterday showed that 52.8 percent of people have made donations digitally.
The survey, which was conducted from April 4 to May 16, showed that 56.1 percent of people said they usually learn about the fundraising efforts of social welfare organizations through their official Web sites, Facebook or Instagram.
Although the overall amount of donations to the fund has fallen amid the pandemic, the number of people supporting the charity through digital means is increasing, it said.
The survey collected 1,492 valid questionnaires and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points, it said.
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