After the 7.4 magnitude earthquake in Taiwan, Christian aid groups are working to…… | News reports

When a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck Taiwan's east coast on Wednesday morning, Carissa Wang, brand communications manager at World Vision Taiwan, was on the Taipei subway on her way to work. The car felt swaying more than usual, then stopped at the next stop when an announcement alerted passengers that service had been ended due to an earthquake.

Wang and her colleagues at World Vision immediately began putting disaster relief protocols into place, assembling their emergency team and reaching out to local government officials to coordinate relief at evacuation centers. World Vision social workers have also begun contacting the 3,000 sponsored children and their families at the Hualien center to make sure they are safe and to find out if they need help.

Wednesday's earthquake was the worst to hit Taiwan in 25 years, damaging buildings and causing landslides. Pictures from the city of Hualien, located on the east coast of the country, showed a red brick building leaning at a 45-degree angle after the first floor collapsed. Large boulders fell down the side of the mountains and closed roads leading to the Taroko Georgi tourist destination, trapping people in a hotel.

However, surprisingly, Hualien City suffered little damage as a result of an earthquake of this magnitude. As of Monday, 13 people had died, and only one of them was killed due to damage to buildings. Most of the others were injured by falling rocks. Ten people are still missing and more than 1,000 others have been injured.

The lower loss of life was attributed to earthquake preparedness in Taiwan, where the government improved and strengthened building codes after a deadly earthquake in 1999 that killed 2,400 people. Public education about earthquakes is widespread, and disaster relief groups are well trained and respond quickly. The Buddhist Tzu Chi Charitable Foundation, one of Taiwan's largest charitable organizations, said it set up a service center to distribute blankets and emergency financial aid within 30 minutes of the quake.

Although Christians make up less than 5% of the population, Christian aid groups, including World Vision Taiwan, Mustard Seed Mission, and 1919 Food Bank, have a significant impact on disaster relief. Each group has its own niche and works side by side to care for the victims. Groups such as Tzu Chi and the Taiwan Red Cross specialize in immediate rescue and relief, while Christian groups focus more on caring for children and families in the affected area, dealing with the emotional trauma caused by the earthquake, and reaching out to indigenous villages where they have existing relationships. .

Through this collaboration, “the evacuees will have a place to stay and we from the Christian communities can accompany them and pray,” said Jeffrey Lee, CEO of the Mustard Seed Mission. “Our role in the aftermath of the earthquake is to seek emotional stability for children and the elderly.”

Working together in shelters

After the earthquake, staff of the Hualien branch of the 1919 Food Bank, part of the Chinese Christian Relief Society, went to the worst-hit area and reached out to their government contacts. They then helped set up evacuation centers at a school, a park and a gymnasium.

Evacuation shelters showed how relief groups worked together. Tzu Chi, headquartered in Hualien, quickly brought in temporary beds and set up four-walled, roofless tents to provide privacy for evacuees. The organization came up with the idea for these privacy barriers after a 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck the city of Hualien in 2018, killing 17 people. The Red Cross provided tents, food, water and other necessities.

Given their experience running a food bank, 1919 was tasked with collecting and distributing donated food and water as well as bringing their mobile kitchen to make food for victims and frontline workers. Staff were filling in wherever needed: some helped sign people in or provided power banks for people who needed to charge their cell phones, while others comforted people who arrived frightened and distraught, said Samuel Chang, director of the 1919 Food Bank.

In the shelters, World Vision set up child care centers, where staff soothed and distracted traumatized children with activities such as singing and drawing, Wang said. They also helped monitor the children when their parents returned packing from homes deemed unsafe to live in.

Members of Mustard Seed Mission, a Christian community development nonprofit, sought to help aid workers by providing massages. Lee pointed out that many of them are exhausted and affected by the earthquake, but because of their work, they cannot show their fear. The masseuses not only relieved their physical tension, but served as friendly listeners, offering advice and comfort.

The nonprofit has a vocational training center in Hualien, which it has opened to the government to hire evacuees who need special care — for example, the elderly or families with young children — and for whom the center's housing is more comfortable than a school hall. Every day it houses and feeds about 60 people.

Learn from Buddhist counterparts

Chang (which in Chinese means “need help”) noted in 1919 that there were things Christian groups could learn from Tzu Chi, a group rooted in humanistic Buddhism. Teacher Cheng Yen, a Buddhist nun in Taiwan, founded the organization in 1966 in response to the suffering of the impoverished community in which she lived. Three Catholic nuns visited Cheng, and as they discussed their religions, they asked her why Buddhists did not establish foster homes, orphanages, and hospitals if their religion taught love and compassion for all living beings. After her conviction, she began collecting donations for the poor and needy.

Today, the international humanitarian group claims to have 10 million active members in 100 countries and territories around the world, involved in medical aid, environmental protection, and disaster relief.

Zhang said Tzu Chi is the most prominent relief group and experts in what they are doing in Taiwan. Even more impressive is their ability to mobilize their members to donate and volunteer when disasters strike. He found, when working alongside Tzu Chi members at a disaster site, that they were always willing to take on the most thankless and menial jobs—such as cleaning the bathroom—while he had never found Christians willing to do so.

Zhang believes the different groups complement each other well. To accommodate their religious dietary restrictions, 1919 prepares vegetarian meals for Tzu Chi Buddhist volunteers. Tzu Chi also called on 1919 leaders to meet with their monks to coordinate disaster response among indigenous groups, many of whom were Christians and had closer connections to Christian organizations.

Lee agrees: “Even though we belong to different religions, in these circumstances, there is a great harmony because we care about these people.”

Encountering God in disaster

Most of the work of Christian groups occurs outside of direct rescue and relief efforts, among the children and families they typically serve. To do this well, they often partner with the local church, which can better gauge the community's needs, Chang says. “The church is local, they know every family and they know the needs of every neighbor,” he said.

The organization works with about 1,500 churches in Taiwan (a third of the nationwide total), helping to set up food banks and after-school centers and providing financial assistance. After the 1919 earthquake, she reached out to partner churches to find needs they could help with. For example, they are working on a partnership with IKEA to provide furniture to some earthquake victims, as well as replacing TVs or water tanks to help families return to their normal lives.

“We hope that through these social services they can see the values ​​of our faith and the comfort that our faith can bring to their experiences,” Zhang said. “We hope that through the gospel and concern for their well-being, they can encounter God even in the midst of this disaster.”

World Vision and Mustard Seed both arrange sponsorship for children in poor communities and work in community development. World Vision staff visited their sponsored children to check the structural integrity of their homes and determine if repairs were needed. They found that about 180 of their families in Hualien had been affected by the earthquake, either because their home was unsafe to live in or because their parents had lost their jobs.

They are also involved in rebuilding children's confidence and security, especially since the region witnessed more than 400 aftershocks following the major earthquake. In societies where resources are already limited, getting people back to normal is even more important to ensure that children stay in school and incomes are stable.

“In terms of water and food, there is enough because the people of Taiwan are full of love,” Wang said. “But what we need to work on is rebuilding homes, dealing with the children’s trauma, and quickly getting them back to their normal lives.”

Providing aid to indigenous groups

Another focus of the Mustard Seed Organization, founded by American missionary Lillian Dixon after World War II, is on Taiwan's indigenous people, who often live in remote mountainous areas. About 70% of Taiwan's indigenous population are believers, many of whom were receptive to the gospel shared by foreign missionaries due to the ostracism they experienced from the Japanese and ethnic Hans in the lowlands.

After the Hualien earthquake, landslides along curving mountain roads blocked access to some of these indigenous villages. Because Mustard Seed was a partner in these churches, it was able to quickly spot needs. On Friday, Lee said one village told them they were running out of food and clean water, so staff loaded a truck with 70 food packages and about 850 water bottles to deliver to them. Suddenly it started raining, raising concern about the condition of the road.

So they changed gears and decided instead to bring help by train. They asked the railway authorities if they could pack the goods into the train car, and they agreed. About ten people carried packages of food and water onto the train, and when they reached the station near the tribal village, strangers helped them move the goods from the train. Villagers met them at the station and brought them supplies the rest of the way.

“Since we have the same Christian faith, it is very natural for us to trust each other during this rescue operation,” he said.

In the long term, all Christian groups intend to prioritize dealing with the emotional and mental health of those affected by the earthquake. Zhang said that many families in Hualien had to repair their homes after the 2018 earthquake, before being hit by another large-scale earthquake six years later. Since many live in fear of the coming earthquake, he believes the church can play a role in providing advice to local residents. He is looking for Christian counselors to go to Hualien and provide these services through the church.

Mustard Seed sees similar needs and is also recruiting students and consultant teachers from seminaries in Taiwan to help families in Hualien City. “Even for non-believers, prayer and professional counseling can soothe feelings after trauma,” Lee said. “We hope to provide not only their physical needs, but also their psychological stability.”

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