“A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice.” – Isaiah 42:3

New York has the largest Chinese population of any city outside of Asia; however, due to the double obstacles of language and cultural barriers, migrant victims of domestic abuse often find it extremely difficult to find assistance and a way out of their situation.

During former GOH CEO Chi Hui-jung’s visit to New York, she observed that a lack of services for Asian female migrants and language/cultural barriers kept human trafficking and sexual assault victims from obtaining needed assistance. Chi met with the Chinese Christian Herald Crusades and multiple North American Christian organizations to discuss this concerning matter while contacting the embassy of Taiwan in New York and Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs about obtaining funding, which led to the establishment of GOH New York (GOHNY) in 2004. Based in Flushing, Queens, GOHNY started with a counseling hotline operated in Chinese and later expanded to shelters. Its board of directors includes two board members from GOH Taiwan. GOHNY thus marked the beginning of GOH’s expansion of international services.

In July 2011, GOH established Hope House in New York – the first Chinese-language shelter in the area. Since then two more shelters, Grace House and Peace House, have been opened in the same spirit, sheltering those who have been displaced due to domestic abuse. In addition, GOHNY puts on events to raise awareness of issues such as violence against women, prevention strategies, and recovery routes in a community that can consider gender abuse a taboo topic.

GOH Taiwan once cooperated with GOHNY in aiding a Taiwanese woman who was a victim of human trafficking. She had entered the U.S. with a tourist visa with the intent to work. She ended up as a sex worker at a bar in New York, only to find all her money taken away by a human trafficker. She stayed at GOHNY’s shelter for a while before being taken to a local psychiatric hospital for her unstable mental health condition, which is when GOH Taiwan found out about her. A GOH Taiwan international team member found the hospital and gained an understanding of the woman’s circumstances and needs, after which they reached out to her family in Taiwan and brought her back home.

For the past two decades, over two thousand women have been able to access crisis intervention, support groups, counseling, shelters, legal advocacy, case management, and children and youth programs through GOH – all for free. This includes hundreds of women and children who have stayed at our shelters after becoming homeless due to domestic violence.

Knowing that “[t]he Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow” (Psalms 146:9) and “speaks up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute” (Proverbs 31:8), GOHNY works to provide holistic care for domestic abuse survivors, helping those in need in the community to turn their lives around and gain the strength to begin again.