By Bianca Tsuo Harmony Home is a non-profit organization committed to helping people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS. Harmony Home is AIDS patients last home. In Taiwan, Harmony home association shelters more than 100 kids and patients in five homes, two for children and three for grown-ups.
Harmony Home also facilitates HIV/ AIDS awareness and education campaigns in different schools all over Taiwan. These programs provide information on HIV/ AIDS and its most common means of transmission. They convey the fatal consequences of drug addiction and the life stories of PLHA (people living with HIV), for both HIV prevention and to lessen the stigma and discrimination directed against PLHA. The Harmony home association has also established shelters in Henan, China. In Henan, Harmony Home provides shelter for about 1,000 people. In the 1980s and 1990s, many people in the region sold blood for blood stations in order to help to raise their families, but by 1999 thousands of these people were diagnosed with HIV. Many patients died, leaving behind orphans. These villages became known as the Aids Villages. In 2002, Harmony Home began establishing centers for these children, providing shelters, medical treatment, and education assistance. Would you like to help? Professor Chris Merkelbach of our department is pleased to welcome you to Harmony Home as a volunteer. Let’s take a look of what he has been doing. Having volunteered for three and a half years, Chris shares his love and joy with those patients. “I read books for people even though they may be in a coma, because we really don‟t know if the brain might still be working. There was a case that a such person woke up after 23 years. He said: „My god! So boring! 23 years no one has talked to me!‟ So we read to them, wash their bodies, give them a massage,” he says. Chris also reads books to kids because it is difficult for the organization to find teachers, mainly because they can only pay very limited amounts. Chris has seen numerous patients‟ die. “When staying with people who are dying, even if it seems to be a waste time you know what you have really helped someone. It‟s a real sense of satisfaction. And when you are in contact with those kids you will love them. When they ask you to read, you will feel happy to do it.” Harmony Home needs more volunteers for people who really need our help. Volunteers can choose what they would like to do and arrange their own working hours. Harmony Home also needs money to hire nurses, as well as workers to run the office. They also pay patients‟ medical bills as most of them don‟t have health insurance. Harmony Home‟s next plan is to become a foundation, in order to quality for government support. But currently, donations are sued to pay children‟s school fees, patients‟ daily expenses, and the salaries of its workers. Chris suggests that people can donate money instead of things such as toys, clothes, or food, since material donations are wasted if they aren‟t used. If we donate money instead, the association can pay for what the patients really need. If you would like to share your joy and help to Harmony Home, go to http://www.harmonyhometaiwan.org/ for more information. (English and Chinese homepage) a
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May 2024
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