Here’s some good news, finally!!! From the Front Page Sections, translated…
Yesterday was Social Worker Celebration Day, in every corner of Taiwan, there are, social workers, giving silently, to those in need, helping those who were in trouble. The Yilan Community Service Station of the Eden Welfare Organization’s head social worker, Shu-Yu Wu had been working as a social worker for sixteen years to date, about a little over a year ago, she’d returned to her hometown, Yilan, and, she’d gone to and from, multiple times, three to four hours each time, on a mountain pass, walked distant tribes, to bring the knowledge of early intervention to the residents, from the beginning, she wasn’t trusted, was turned down and turned away time and time again, to now, she’s become, welcomed to the tribe. Wu smiled and said, that although it was difficult from the start, “but I’m very moved, and it’d been more than worth it to me.”
Wu originally worked in Taoyuan, a little over a year ago, she’d decided to move back home, and took up the post of supervising social worker, became the frontierswoman of Eden Welfare Organization’s activist in San-Xing County, Yilan, and Datong area.
Wu said, that the family situations from the tribes with the low economic statuses, and cross-generation childrearing are especially high, a lot of the parents are too stressed about making the money, to even pay ANY attention to the education of their young, “it wasn’t that they’d not cared, it’s because they cared, but, they couldn’t make the time”, plus, there’s this lack of stimuli to the culture in the mountains, and the resources are not enough compared to the urban areas, and so, more attention should be paid to the development of children.
Wu shared, that at first, as she walked into the tribes, the residents of the tribes had no idea of child development, plus they’d all lived close to one another, and feared how they were being perceived by the neighbors, and either that she and her group were mistaken as scam rings, or the families are afraid that the neighbors would mistakenly believe, that something was wrong with their own young, they’d turned her down. Later on, she’d changed her methods of approach, instead of mentioning words like “developmentally delayed”, instead, she’d used a positive manner, called out to the people in the tribes, that she was advocating for the children’s developments, slowly, it’d allowed the people in the tribes become more open to the changes brought by the social workers.
And so, this woman worked hard, to convince the people in the tribes, that they’d needed to socialize their young in multiple ways, and, this woman made the trips to and from the tribes, with a four-hour drive each way, and, it’s her never-giving up, always advocating attitude, that’d made the people in the tribes realized, that she really DO care about them and their young, and that, was why they became more welcoming to her in the end.