Since the initiation of the GSWF in December of 1986, we have insisted on the ideal that ‘Once a patient with PVS has been looked after, a family may survive'. With this faith, we aim to establish more care home for vegetables subsidiaries in Taiwan. We provide necessary daily care for PVS sufferers in poverty. Up to this point, more than one thousand people have received care. People with a PVS certificate or handbook of physical or mental disability caused by brain damage, who are registered to the government as impoverished, and have no infectious disease confirmed by a hospital, may apply for services offered by the GSWF.

A patient with PVS requires full-time care, so the GSWF has employed professional nursing staff to serve them 24 hours a day. In order to keep patients with PVS clean and to prevent bedsores, nurses need to reposition the patients frequently and change their incontinence pads every two hours. The nurses pat the patients’ backs to assist them in spitting every two hours and feed them every four hours. Every two days, the nurses help the patients with PVS to take a bath. If the patients with PVS have an emergency, the nurses will send them to the hospital at once.

GSWF has discovered that in many cases, PVS patients are cared for by families at home. To help these families to improve the quality and skills for care and provide them with comprehensive supports, GSWF has started “PVS Home-based Service” since August, 2003. For households with PVS patients, immobile elders or elders with dementia, they can call GSWF to apply for the home-based service. GSWF will then send the professional nurses, social workers and volunteers to their homes and offer care and nutrition consultation and instruction, medical care and social resource information, patient referral, and mental care and support to family members.

Making greeting calls to solitary elderly people

In order to prevent any emergency from happening to solitary elders with no access to assistance from others, and in hopes that there would be no delay for emergent medical care, the greeting call service was begun in May 1989. Volunteer social workers make greeting calls every day according to an arranged appointment from two to six in the afternoon. If the social workers get no respond from an elder they call for three times, they contact the elder’s relatives, friends or neighbors to have a check. Visiting elders can also prevent an emergency and comfort the lonely hearts of solitary elderly people.

Visiting mentally disabled elderly people and provide home services

With the aging of the Taiwanese society, the population of elderly people with mental deterioration has increased. This has caused family and social problems and requires urgent solutions. Thus, the GSWF established the center for dimented elder in 1995 which offers humanized, family-like, and professional nursing in order to decrease the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease and to share the family burdens. In May of 2000, the GSWF started to promote ‘community half-way station’. Voluntary social workers visit elders in need constantly and provide services, such as household cleaning, daily-life assistance, or temporary alternative care, and even to accompany the elders to hospitals for medical treatments, etc.

The establishment of the ‘ Elder Leisure Activity Center '

The establishment of the sister foundation ‘Huashan’

In order to expand services for the elderly, the GSWF has assisted in the establishment of the Huashan Social Welfare Foundation at 1999. The Huashan foundation has set up the community half-way station and the community charity and beneficence center to serve elderly people with no partners and with mental impairment in order to make the services appropriate.

In 1991, the GSWF started to serve homeless people in Wanhua District in Taipei. In 1997, the “Safe Harbor for the Homeless’ was established on Da-li Street in Wanhua District in order to offer the following services:

Meal Center — GSWF provides lunches and dinners for the homeless to save them from starvation. On the Dragon Boat Festival, the Mid-autumn Festival, and during year-end feast, GSWF offers the homeless with rice dumplings, moon cakes, and feasts.At the same time,GSWF also encourages them to return to a normal life for time to time.

Protecting the homeless from the cold — we initiated the activity of the ‘symbolic sauna bath for the homeless' in 1991 to provide them with winter clothes against the coldness. The activity aimed to help them to clean themselves properly so as to recover their self-esteem and to keep the city looking neat.

Disease prevention — whenever the elderly and weak homeless people are confronted with diseases, we assist them to take medical treatments, and help them to apply for national health and welfare insurance. Also, our service helps them to prevent suffering and death on the street.

The Establishment of the Zenan Social Welfare Foundation

The Zenan Social Welfare Foundation has planned the ‘shelter company’ and self-survival projects with the purpose of establishing the self-confidence of the homeless, and we also plan to urge them to be financially independent. We hope those homeless can eventually they can return to the society and engage in it. In July 2002, the GSWF assisted in the establishment of the Zenan Social Welfare Foundation in order to raise the quality and quantity of services for the homeless.

This foundation provides necessary care and support to enhance the rehabilitation of homeless people. It works for those who are physically disabled, and mentally or psychologically impaired or abused, including the homeless. The foundation not only attempts to meet the basic physical needs of the homeless but also tries to arrange job training and career consultation for them. Furthermore, it teams the homeless up to provide social services, such as street cleaning and traffic directing, in order to have them contribute back to the community. By doing so, the foundation hopes to reverse the public’s conventional image about the homeless and help them to gain public support.

The GSWF needs many volunteers to support daily services and administration tasks. In order to manage and coordinate the volunteers effectively, a committee is formed to perform the strategic plans and make decisions. In addition, teams are organized to carry out plans and activities. Till now, there are around three thousand registered volunteers, among which three hundred and fifty regularly participate in daily services and activities, contributing two thousand five hundred working-hours each month.

Every month, the organization communicates and interacts with volunteers through newsletters and birthday cards. The volunteers include students, retirees, housewives, and working people.

The present development of the GSWF
　　
Twenty-four years have passed since the initiation of the GSWF We now have received more than a thousand PVS sufferers in poverty and have helped to share the burden of their families . However, we have learned that there are totally seven thousand PVS sufferers in Taiwan . This indicates that the GSWF has only looked after 5% of this population. In other words, we need to put more efforts into taking care of the other 95%.

In addition to the sparse governmental financial support, 90% of the budget of GSWF for its services is contributed by irregular donations from people in Taiwan. A formal receipt is given to every donation, which will be used according to the donor's wish for specific purposes.

Looking into the future, GSWF combines its efforts with its sister foundations, Huashan and Zenan Social Welfare Foundations, and proposes the project of “369, 23, 20”. This project aims to set up ‘community half-way station’ in 369 townships, Care Home for Vegetables Subsidiaries in 23 cities and counties (including those in offshore islands), and 20 Safe Harbors for the Homeless along major railroads. To realize this project, we need your participation and encouragement. Come and join the GSWF.