When a 7.4-magnitude earthquake hit the east coast of Taiwan Wednesday morning, Carissa Wang, branding communication director of World Vision Taiwan, was on the Taipei subway on her option to work. She felt the carriage sway greater than usual, after which it stopped at the following station as an announcement alerted passengers that service had ended as a result of an earthquake.
Wang and her World Vision colleagues immediately began putting disaster relief protocols into motion, assembling their emergency team and reaching out to local government officials to coordinate relief at evacuation centers. World Vision social staff also began to contact the three,000 sponsored children and their families within the epicenter of Hualien to be sure that they were secure and discover in the event that they needed help.
Wednesday’s quake was the worst to hit Taiwan in 25 years, damaging buildings and causing landslides. Images from Hualien, a city on the country’s east coast, showed a red brick constructing leaning at a 45-degree angle after its first floor collapsed. Large rocks tumbled down the side of mountains and blocked roads into the tourist destination of Taroko Gorge, trapping people at a hotel.
Yet Hualien sustained surprisingly little damage for an earthquake of such magnitude. As of Monday, 13 people had died, and only one among them was killed as a result of constructing damage. Most of the others were hit by falling rocks. Ten individuals are still missing and greater than 1,000 were injured.
The low lack of life is attributed to Taiwan’s earthquake preparedness, as the federal government improved and reinforced constructing codes after a deadly earthquake in 1999 killed 2,400 people. Public education on earthquakes is widespread, and disaster relief groups are well-trained and respond quickly. Buddhist Tzu Chi Charity Foundation, one among the most important philanthropic organizations in Taiwan, said that inside half-hour of the quake, it had arrange a service center to pass out blankets and emergency financial aid.
Although Christians make up lower than 5 percent of the population, Christian aid groups including World Vision Taiwan, Mustard Seed Mission, and 1919 Food Bank have an outsized influence on disaster relief. The groups each have their area of interest and are working side by side to take care of the victims. Groups like Tzu Chi and Red Cross Taiwan focus on rescue and immediate relief, while Christian groups are more focused on caring for youngsters and families within the impacted area, coping with the emotional trauma of the quake, and reaching indigenous villages where they’ve existing relationships.
Through this collaboration, “evacuees have a spot to remain and people of us from Christian groups can accompany them and pray,” said Jeffrey Lee, CEO of Mustard Seed Mission. “Our role on this earthquake aftermath is that we seek the emotional stability of the kids and the elderly.”
Working together within the shelters
After the earthquake, staff on the Hualien branch of 1919 Food Bank, a part of the Chinese Christian Relief Association, drove to essentially the most impacted area and got in contact with their government contacts. They then helped arrange evacuation centers at a faculty, a park, and a gymnasium.
The evacuation shelters demonstrated how the relief groups worked together. Tzu Chi, which is headquartered in Hualien, quickly brought in temporary beds and arrange four-walled tents with out a roof to supply privacy for the evacuees. The organization got here up with the thought for these privacy barriers after a 6.2-magnitude earthquake hit Hualien in 2018, killing 17. The Red Cross provided tents, food, water, and other necessities.
Due to their experience running a food bank, 1919 was tasked with collecting and distributing donated food and water in addition to bringing of their mobile kitchen to make food for victims and frontline staff. Samuel Chang, director of the 1919 Food Bank, said that staff filled in wherever needed: Some helped check people in or provided power banks for people needing to charge their cell phones, while others comforted and prayed for individuals who arrived frightened and distraught.
In the shelters, World Vision arrange children’s care centers, where staff worked to calm and distract traumatized children through activities resembling singing and drawing, Wang said. They also helped watch the youngsters as parents returned to pack up belongings from homes deemed unsafe to live in.
Members of Mustard Seed Mission, a Christian community development nonprofit, sought to assist aid staff by providing massages. Lee noted that lots of them are exhausted and themselves impacted by the earthquake but due to their job, they’ll’t show that they’re scared. The masseuses not only relieved their physical tensions but served as friendly listeners, providing counsel and luxury.
The nonprofit has a vocational training center in Hualien, which it opened up for the federal government to put evacuees who need special care—as an example, the elderly or families with young children—and for whom the middle’s dormitory is more comfortable than a faculty auditorium. Everyday, houses and feeds about 60 people.
Learning from Buddhist counterparts
Chang of 1919 (which in Chinese is a homophone for “need assistance”) observed that there are things Christian groups can learn from Tzu Chi, a bunch rooted in Humanistic Buddhism. Master Cheng Yen, a Buddhist nun in Taiwan, founded the organization in 1966 in response to the suffering of the impoverished community where she lived. Three Catholic nuns visited Cheng, and as they discussed their religions, they asked her why Buddhists weren’t organising nursing homes, orphanages, and hospitals if their religion teaches love and compassion for all living beings. Convicted, she began collecting donations for the poor and needy.
Today, the international humanitarian group claims to have 10 million members energetic in 100 countries and territories world wide, engaging in medical aid, environmental protection, and disaster relief.
In Taiwan, Tzu Chi is essentially the most outstanding relief group and experts at what they do, said Chang. Most impressive is their ability to mobilize their members to donate and volunteer when disasters occur. He’s found, when working alongside Tzu Chi members at a disaster site, that they’re all the time willing to take essentially the most thankless and menial jobs—like cleansing the lavatory—whereas he hasn’t found Christians as willing to achieve this.
Chang believes the several groups complement one another well. To accommodate their religious dietary restrictions, 1919 prepares vegetarian meals for the Buddhist Tzu Chi volunteers. Tzu Chi has also invited 1919 leaders to satisfy with their monks to coordinate disaster response among the many indigenous groups, lots of whom are Christians and have closer connections to Christians organizations.
Lee agrees: “Even though we come from different faiths, on this circumstance, it’s an ideal match as we take care of these people.”
Encountering God within the disaster
Most of the Christian groups’ work occurs outside of the immediate rescue and relief efforts, amongst the kids and families whom they typically serve. To try this well, they often partner with the local church, which might higher gauge a community’s needs, said Chang. “The church is local, they know every family they usually know every neighbor’s needs,” he said.
The organization works with about 1,500 churches in Taiwan (one-third of the overall number nationwide), helping to establish food banks and afterschool centers and to supply financial assistance. After the earthquake, 1919 reached out to partner churches to seek out needs that they’ll assist with. For instance, they’re working on a partnership with Ikea to supply furniture to among the earthquake victims, in addition to replacing televisions or water tanks to assist families return to normalcy.
“We hope that through these social services, they’ll see the values of our faith and the comfort that our faith can herald their trials,” Chang said. “We hope that through the gospel and caring for his or her welfare, they’ll encounter God even within the midst of this disaster.”
World Vision and Mustard Seed each arrange sponsorships for youngsters in impoverished communities and work in community development. World Vision staff visited their sponsored children to ascertain the structural integrity of their homes and determine whether repairs are needed. They found that about 180 of their families in Hualien have been impacted by the earthquake, either because their house is unsafe to live in or their parents lost their jobs.
They’re also involved in rebuilding the kids’s confidence and security, especially because the region experienced greater than 400 aftershocks following the massive quake. In communities where resources are already limited, getting people back to normal life is much more vital to be sure that kids stay at school and income stays stable.
“In terms of water and food, there may be enough because the people of Taiwan are stuffed with love,” Wang said. “But what we want to work on is rebuilding the homes, coping with the kids’s trauma, and quickly returning them to their bizarre lives.”
Providing aid to indigenous groups
Another focus of Mustard Seed, founded by American missionary Lillian Dickson after World War II, is on Taiwan’s indigenous people, who often live in distant mountainous areas. About 70 percent of indigenous people in Taiwan are believers, as many were receptive to the gospel shared by foreign missionaries as a result of the ostracism they’d suffered from the Japanese and ethnic Hans within the lowlands.
After the Hualien earthquake, landslides along curving mountain roads blocked access to a few of these indigenous villages. Because Mustard Seed partners with these churches, they were capable of quickly discover where the needs were. On Friday, Lee said that one village told them they were running low on food and clean water, so staff loaded up a truck with 70 food packs and about 850 water bottles to deliver to them. Suddenly it began to rain, causing concern in regards to the road conditions.
So they switched gears and decided as a substitute to bring the help by train. They asked the railway authorities in the event that they could pack the products onto the train automotive, they usually agreed. About a dozen people hauled the food packs and water onto the train, and after they reached the station near the tribal village, strangers helped them move the products off the train. Villagers met them on the station and brought the supplies the remaining of the way in which.
“Because we now have the identical Christian faith, it’s very natural for us to trust one another during this rescue process,” he said.
Long-term, all of the Christian groups intend to prioritize coping with the emotional and mental health of those affected by the quake. Many of the families in Hualien needed to repair their homes after the 2018 earthquake, only to have one other large-scale earthquake hit six years later, said Chang. As many live in fear of the following earthquake, he believes the church can play a task in providing counseling to locals. He’s in search of Christian counselors to go to Hualien and supply these services through the church.
Mustard Seed is seeing similar needs and likewise recruiting counseling students and teachers from Taiwan’s seminaries to assist families in Hualien. “Even for nonbelievers, prayer and skilled consultation can calm emotions after trauma,” Lee said. “We hope to supply for not only their physical needs but in addition their psychological stability.”
