Caritas Taiwan – the Commission for Social Development – was founded 1969 and works to help people at home and abroad. Taiwan has a dynamic economy, from low-technology goods to higher-value manufacturing and exports, mainly in electronics and computers. Caritas Taiwan works with people living in challenging conditions, who do not feel the benefit of this prosperity.

Work at home includes:

• Volunteer teachers imparting new skills to instructors of refugees;
• Working for migrant workers’ rights with staff from the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand, who organize dialogue with religious and lay groups and encourage lobbying;
• Helping people in mountainous areas to cope in the aftermath of landslides, by providing schoolchildren with seeds to plant near their homes and schools;
• Further work with local people, including projects to recycle food as fertilizer, and a bus-to-school system to avoid truancy.

Aid to those living in other countries includes financial help for those in Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, and refugees forced from Iraq to countries such as Jordan.

The agency has ties with Caritas Mongolia: under a project called Sending Our Love to Mongolia, it delivered 3,000 boxes packed with clothes, shoes, school supplies and other materials.