The Life Experience
Becoming the Borough Chief
- ▼Training Teenagers
- ▼Helping Elderly Living Alone
- ▼Looking After Children
- ▼Promoting Nanjichang
- ▼Beginning Public Welfare
Pay Love Forward
Becoming the Borough Chief
Having lived in the Nanjichang Community for almost 60 years, there are plenty of reasons that made him want to be the borough chief. There are too many places, equipment, and services that are waiting for improvement.
Watching those neighbors who were once his parents’ friends get old and live alone without getting proper care, he had great empathy toward the elders. Not only do the elders need to be taken care of, the toddlers and teenagers should also be looked after. They deserve a better learning environment and a place that could give them the warmth and attention they needed.
The borough chief also wanted to prepare teenagers of the community with better life skills that can benefit those teenagers’ families in the future. In order to make the Nanjichang Community as competitive as other communities in Taipei, the borough chief, Fang Ho-Sheng devotes himself to solving problems for both elders and the disadvantaged families.
dreams come true
Training Teenagers
Preparing teenagers with a skill for living is one of the most important tasks that can solve the fundamental problems of the disadvantaged families. Through the effort of the borough chief, unemployed teenagers in the community have the opportunity to learn barista skills in Nanjichang.
barista skills
The borough chief, Fang Ho-Sheng, understands the way to stop the disadvantaged situation from continuing in a vicious circle is by helping teenagers to get a job. He also realized it is difficult for teenagers to take certified courses in barista skills in the UK. Therefore, he applied to the UK International Coffee Organization, City and Guilds, to hold a certificate exam on barista skills in his café in Nanjichang. Teenagers, then, can learn the barista skills and pass the exam simultaneously. When the teenagers learn a skill for living, they can find a better job and earn money to support their families.
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Helping Elderly Living Alone
As a Chinese old saying goes, “Having an elder at home is like having a piece of treasure.” This means that the knowledge and experiences an elder has are as precious as hidden treasure. However, this could not be applied in the situation of Nanjichang.
There are many elders who are left alone at home in the Nanjichang Community. They have neither children nor grandchildren to take care of them. They live their lives in a shabby public housing, and they dine with the accompaniment of their television. No one cares whether they have enough food or whether they are lonely. Some even die without anyone noticing. Under the circumstances mentioned above, they lost the purpose of living.
Therefore, in order to encourage the elders to come out of their houses, Fang Ho-Sheng started the Food Bank, and the Happy Kitchen, a restaurant that collects and stores vegetables donated by local supermarkets. With these services, he encourage the elders to come out, have dinner, and chat with each other. He also provides some other services, such as regular health check and community exercise. Each time when the elders join the dinner or other activities, they can earn points that can be used for exchanging food from the Food Bank. It is a great encouragement for the elders, so they are more willing to participate in the activities in the community.
As the borough chief had hoped, the elders can, once again, remember what it feels like to be loved and cared for. They have rediscovered the purpose of life.
elder to eat together in the Happy Kitchen
bag to the elders’ homes
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Looking After Children
While the government is solving problems of rural education, children in the Nanjichang Community have no one to turn to for help. Children in Nanjichang usually come from poor or disadvantaged families, so the borough chief thought of another service hoping to improve the overall living standard of the community.
The borough chief, Fang Ho-Sheng set up rooms in his office and turned them into after-school classrooms and brought volunteering teachers to teach the children after school. He hopes this can improve their learning. Even though the children are far behind, Mr. Fang Ho-Sheng believes that they will eventually catch up. Because of this service, children go directly to the after-school program as fast as they can after school. The classrooms are also separated for different grades, and the teachers are different as well. This can maintain the learning atmosphere and behavior in each grade.
With the positive learning attitude, Mr. Fang Ho-Sheng hopes that the children will not give up on themselves just because of their social status.
encourages children to check out books
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Promoting Nanjichang
Although the Nanjichang Community is underprivileged, the Nanjichang Night Market is well-known by everyone. Therefore, it is not an impossible task to make Nanjichang alive again just as its night market. With the effort of the borough chief, Fang Ho-Sheng, Nanjichang has become the one and only community that has a well-organized social welfare system. It is also one of the coziest community in Taipei these days.
Mr. Fang Ho-Sheng hopes that he can have the ability to take care of his people no matter their age. He wants to overturn the stereotype people used to have about Nanjichang. Among all of his dreams, creating a stable and friendly living environment for the elders, the youths, the disadvantaged, and the unemployed is prior to anything else. With a better living environment, a good education and the opportunity of getting a job, the residents will be able to flip the future themselves.
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Beginning Public Welfare
Aside from helping the poor families, the elders, and the disadvantaged, there is another reason that the borough chief wants to change the community; this is why he created the Food Plant Community Fridge.
There are a lot of charities in Taipei. The charities usually buy some rice and donate it to the poor; however, when the families receive the rice, parents would rather sell it for money and buy alcohol, leaving their children hungry without breakfast.
Mr. Fang Ho-Sheng disagrees with the action of buying then donating. He believes that there are many resources wasted in a city. For example, most bakeries in Taiwan do not sell overnight bread. Thus, the leftover bread will be wasted. A bakery often makes a thousand kilograms of bread and throws 300 kilograms of them away every week. What a waste! Therefore, Mr. Fang Ho-Sheng selected the bread his people likes the most and works with companies, such as Wu Pao Chun Bakery and Carrefour, to provide expiring bread. The bread can usually last for one to three days. Upon receiving the bread, volunteers repack the expiring bread again with new expiration date labels and store them in the community fridge.
The community fridge is not solely for the residents in the community but also for anyone who needs it. This food-sharing system benefits his community and, incidentally, also helps those bakeries. The idea has become popular and has spread widely to other districts. Currently, there are over three community fridges in Taipei.