In 1997, The Garden of Hope developed services to help prepare disadvantaged women for employment. It provided a flexible, friendly workplace for disadvantaged women, and allocated resources for social workers and domestic helpers. It helped alleviate the pressures on these women to look after and financially support their children. By creating various employment services, the Foundation helped to build these women’s confidence and ability to find work, to better their difficult situation, and to let them lead independent lives.

Through its long-term development of these services, The Garden of Hope saw that disadvantaged families’ quality of life was being affected by their lack of basic goods. However, most material aid for disadvantaged families in Taiwan comes from temples and charity organizations, who offer mostly food on an irregular basis during festivals. Back then, there were no platforms providing long-term material support to disadvantaged families. To rectify this, The Garden of Hope founded the Kaohsiung Resources Center, in order to help prepare and equip disadvantaged women for employment, and to provide disadvantaged families with the goods they needed. We also founded the Social Welfare Resources Platform, such that all social welfare institutions can freely acquire resources via the Resource Sharing Centers and help disadvantaged families.