Creating a Gender-Equal and Sustainable Society
One of The Garden of Hope Foundation’s (GOH) founding members and American missionary, Angie Golman (高愛琪), was on a mission trip to Taiwan and brought her vision for a halfway house for trafficked women and girls in Taiwan to more Taiwanese Christians and Christian organizations, leading to the official establishment of the GOH in 1988. In a founding document, Golman specifically quoted Job 14: 7-9: “For there is hope for a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. Though its root grows old in the earth, and its stump dies in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth branches like a young plant.” This was also an important inspiration for the subsequent development of the GOH. We have grown from a staff of three to 600 and from one halfway house to more than 60 service sites nationwide, and our clientele has expanded from trafficked women and girls to include victims of gender-based violence. We are committed to healing the lives of those who have suffered abuse and trauma, nourishing with a fountain of life branches that have been cut down so that they may grow new shoots. We continue to push forward with our ultimate goal of “giving her a place to grow” as the largest gender-based violence prevention NGO in Taiwan.
Throughout its more than 30 years of local development in Taiwan, the GOH has been working diligently to keep up with the international community. In reviewing the development of our services from the perspective of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we have found that in addition to the existing secondary services for the protection of women and children who are victims of violence, we need to strengthen primary prevention in the community and tertiary prevention in the aspect of case management. The fifth SDG, “achieving gender equality and empowering women,” has been a long-standing mission of the GOH. We believe that gender equality is an essential component in the fight against gender-based violence, so that is our SDG of primary focus. To achieve this goal, the GOH has set up independent homes in several counties and cities around Taiwan over the past few years, providing counseling by social workers, stable housing, childcare, and employment training services while promoting community integration through local training and local care. It is our belief that only when members of the community are interconnected with each other, fully empowered in the community, and have sufficient employment opportunities, can we create the conditions for sustainable community development.
In addition, we have been working in the economic, educational, political, social, technological, and artistic and cultural spheres to prevent all forms of sexual violence and exploitation through public education and advocacy (SDG 4), eliminate gender inequality and discrimination (SDG 10), and provide adequate resources to and backing for the rights of gender-disadvantaged groups through such means as employment services and asset accumulation programs to better address gender-based poverty (SDG 1). In the meantime, to prevent secondary victimization, we advocate for increasing gender awareness and understanding of the circumstances of female victims of violence and other victims of sexual violence within the judicial system and law enforcement agencies (SDG 16). Lastly, we collaborate with other domestic NGOs and international organizations to help achieve these SDGs (SDG 17).
From this, we have found that every single SDG is interconnected, which coincides with what the GOH’s years of experience in social work and law revision advocacy have revealed: No issue exists in isolation, and there is no single solution to these problems. Only by thinking with greater flexibility and integration will we ever have the chance of realizing the SDGs.
A look at the present from the perspective of the future
What kind of world are we leaving behind for our children and the next generation? I can’t help but ask myself this question every time I make an important decision. Besides simply helping people get past one barrier after another, what the GOH has spent more time thinking about is how to remove the barriers that exclude people and how to build a society where everyone can participate equally, regardless of their gender, age, and race. This is one of the most important aims of the SDGs: to eliminate all forms of inequality.
And finally, in holding to the spirit and mission of the GOH, it is my sincere hope that every person will thrive and enjoy life with the dignity and honor that they deserve in an environment free of gender discrimination and violence.
CEO, Wang Yueh Hao