Little Sun Workshop with the Earthquake*

Little Sun Workshop with the Earthquake*

Jennifer Chien

（Chinese Culture University social work credit courses）

 Tiawan is on the earthquake belt , in our daily life we get used to

prepare, practice, of course, and everyone has own ways to protect

themselves when face the earthquakes. When this day of 2024.04.03, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake hit the coast of Hualien “Earthquake”. When I faced to go out or stay calm crawling on the ground, that moment I realized how difficult to choose to escape or to give my hands to God; not to mention these disable people how scared they would be and how difficult to escape from the unsafe environment. Although the magnitude of this earthquake is second

only to the 7.3 magnitude of the “921 Earthquake” in 1999, it is also equivalent to the explosive power of 32 atomic bombs. On the same day, my professor visited the small workshop of Little Sun Workshop to participate in Yilan. When he has written about “The visiting workshop has great impact on the heart that is no less powerful than the”0403 earthquake.” I was so curios about why the workshop with earthquake has the same impact.

Basically, from Dr. Wang’s article through a historical review of the changes in laws and regulations, the concept, positioning, and changes of setting up small workplaces were clarified. In this regard, the “Law on the Protection of Rights and Interests of Persons with Disabilities” that was revised and promulgated in 2007 included the employment of persons with disabilities. Relevant business within the ministry is assigned to the labor administration department. As for life support and reconstruction services, it is the responsibility of the social affairs department. This also establishes that social affairs and labor administration can both jointly perform in this service. In the era of two parallel tracks, sheltered workshops have transformed into employment-oriented employment for disabled people, and they need to comply with the Labor Standards Act to protect their labor rights. Worst of all, such institutional changes have also made many people originally social welfare groups that set up sheltered workshops for the disabled personnel costs, leaving the disabled people who originally studied in the sheltered workshops faced with the dilemma of where to go.

In view of this, the Ministry of the Interior began a trial in 2009 Establish a “Service Model Project of Community Day Work Facilities for People with Mental Disabilities” to allow this group of people with mental disabilities who are unable to find work after leaving sheltered workshops but do not need institutional cares to choose this respite cares and life support facilities, such as day care institutions. From the history, because the policy had changed, we can learn that the Little Sun workshop places an important halfway station between learning to work and ready to work.

In the article, it is true that the community day operation facility (referred to as a small facility), which provides both day cares and work activities for the disabled, mainly serves people over 18 years old (the age of those with special needs can be extended to 15 years old), and there are People with disabilities who have the will and ability to take care of themselves and work to a certain extent. However, the overall assessment of this group of people with disabilities is not only enough to enter a sheltered factory or supported employment system, but they also do not need to be arranged to live in an all-weather and closed type institutional maintenance. So, the concept of this small workshop was born that covers work activities such as outsourcing, curriculum activities to cultivate and empower people, and social participation in interpersonal relationships. In this way, the standard operations of small workshops that connect case evaluation, opening services, job training, life reconstruction, work skills, and employment to after job counseling. Due to the workshops’ standard operation, they have also allowed other small workshops to flourish across Taiwan.

How can they surprisingly succeed in demonstrating multiple purposes and functions? In this regard, refers directly to community-based of small workshops with different conceptual connotations of micro, mini, exquisite, cross-domain, integration, relay, and locality. It is necessary to examine the creation, operation, and glimpse of the future of small workshops. Have multi-faceted thinking that transcends instrumental rationality. Therefore, these community based, functional based, micro based workshops give disable people hope and dignity to live, to work, to enjoy education, and to participate within communities. On the other hand, we need to deeply think about how these workshops could meet every type of disabled people’s need, and how they operate to keep the workshops  alive and help more people in the future.

In Dr. Wang’s hope , adhering to the spirit of the concept from defending the human rights of the disabled to returning to selfdetermination theory, private organizations such as the Yilan County Kant Humanistic Care Association have successively set up two small workshops in Lanyang Plain, through work activities, independent living and social Integration and other mechanisms are designed to convey the empowerment of individuals with disabilities to increase the positive impact on families with disabilities. Hence, the role transformation from the recipients of disabilities or family members to helpers Chat Saved Chat families with disabilities. It also includes the helping works of education and social workers. So, from receiving help to become helpers that is Kant Humanistic Care Association’s mission.

Most importantly, this allows the creative transformation of the small workshops to return to the “individual” of handicap, the “system design” of the small workshop, and the “disability environment” of social inclusion Integrative thinking, such as from people with mental disabilities to classified students, from fresh graduates of special education to people with mental disabilities in the community, from small workplace resource exclusion, from community resource deployment to operational structural restrictions, from self-recruitment to multi-party integration student information circulation, from the division of labor at all levels of government to public-private cooperation, from a barrier-free hardware physical environment to a humanistic and friendly environment with software literacy, from self-raising of start-up funds to medium and long-term government subsidies, from the normative needs of students to expressive needs of parents, from holistic care for the disabled to daytime respite for disabled family members, from adaptive living to social participation, from health promotion to occupational activities, from workshop base to quasisheltered transition to supported employment, from the front-line education and nursing staff to the care and management team of personal management and social workers, from the collective operation of the workshop to the individual differentiated services for students or families, from the assessment of the production capacity of the social affairs workshop to the sales and marketing of handmade products, from the hungry hands and feet of the calloused people waiting for food From the market scale of economies of scale, the service performance of a single indicator to the key changes in the medium and long term, from evaluation indicators to guidance mechanisms, and from the lack of horizontal synergy to strategic alliances between industry, government ,academia and research, etc.,

There is an urgent need to have big break and great creation’s drastic change in behavior. Above all this dilemma is enough to shake our government, communities, private workshops, social workers, and professional workers to change and to solve these problems to make them have better chances seeking employment, better opportunities seeing quality of equal lives, and better policy protecting their rights. The article has a proverb, “all good events originate from good will.” It reveals the main inter-subjectivity of human caring theory about “giving-getting” and “giving-receiving”. In response to any natural disaster or man-made disaster, the spirit of great love and selflessness that should be displayed appears. It is true that in the early days, these children were hidden and felt disgraceful by their parents. Now, they can come out calmly and form an alternative group family with friends who have experienced similar experiences. Each is each other’s boss and each other’s younger brother. Finding the self-confidence that was originally impossible to hope for in a lifetime from peers. As for the parents who are family caregivers, it is a little more breathing and less sighing, a person who “uses his life to enter other people’s lives” and ” “Use life to influence your own life” is a small workshop of Little Sun Workshop’s principle.

Undoubtedly, these workshops are like sun to shine on the disable’s lives and give them direction to have dignity lives. people  having great love without selfish trying to help them to stand both feet on our community to live, to work, to enjoy their equal right, to educate, and to become a contributor. I realized the workshops like the after earthquake, many people love people with unconditionally. They both sacrifice their time, money, resources, and abilities to connect the broken roads, save lives, offer resources, and help people affected by the disaster. We cannot make nature disaster go away, but we would pass our strong selflessness love which influence others’ lives as the workshops do.

*The article based upon “A visit to Little Sun Workshop that shocks as an alternative life experience” By Professor Wang Shunmin(Institute of Social Welfare, Chinese Culture University)