At Taiwanfest, Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation volunteers give back

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      It’s been 22 years since Gary Ho founded the Canadian branch of the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation, and when Taiwanfest takes place this weekend, the local developer will be out there with a team of volunteers keeping the city clean, sweeping streets, and setting up recycling and compost bins.

      Helping the festival be a zero-waste event is just one tiny part of the work the Tzu Chi Foundation does at home and abroad. Since Ho moved to Vancouver from Taipei in 1996, along with his wife and three young sons, the organization has grown to more than 40,000 volunteers across the country, who do everything from work at inner-city soup kitchens to assist with global disaster relief.

      Ho is passing along his title of CEO this fall to another long-standing volunteer, current vice CEO Mac Miao. But Ho is hardly done with helping people in need.

      “I’m still a full-time volunteer,” Ho says over a cup of sencha at a downtown café. “When you serve other people and serve with gratitude, you earn smiles from them and then you feel happy. Serving brings happiness. Giving is much more fortunate than receiving.”

      It’s a simple message that Ho first learned when he was living in Taiwan and went to a lecture by Dharma Master Cheng Yen, a Buddhist nun who founded Tzu Chi in 1966. He was so inspired by her message of helping others that he began to follow suit. When Ho and his family had decided to move to Canada, he went to talk to Yen about having to resign as a volunteer. She had another idea.

      “She told me, ‘Since you’re going to Canada and you will live under the sky of Canada and stand on the land of Canada, you must pay back,’ ” he recalls. “ ‘Bring the seeds of love to Canada.’

      “I follow that philosophy of paying back to the community,” adds Ho, author of Challenges: The Life and Teachings of Venerable Master Cheng Yen. “Our goal is for a harmonized community and a disaster-free world. We always try to find where we can serve.”

      The Tzu Chi Foundation has five missions: charity, medicine, education, environmental care, and culture.

      The organization is part of the Ministry of Justice’s emergency social services network, which provides immediate support to victims of disasters and accidents. It has sent volunteers to help with floods, forest fires, airplane and car crashes, and snowstorms throughout the province and in Alberta.

      In cases of natural disaster, volunteers distribute food, daily necessities, and grocery-store gift cards and help with cleanup and translation.

      When Tzu Chi volunteers travel to help with global disasters, they pay for their own expenses, meaning donations aren’t funnelled to administrative expenses. Tzu Chi Canada has carried out relief efforts following earthquakes in Turkey, Taiwan, Haiti, Japan, and China; after Hurricane Katrina; after the South Asian tsunami; and following typhoons in the Philippines and Taiwan.

      “We call our team of volunteers Team Canada,” Ho says with a laugh.

      The organization also established Asia’s largest bone-marrow registry, the Tzu Chi Taiwan Marrow Donor Registry, which is also the fifth-largest in the world.

      Locally, Tzu Chi volunteers (around 3,000 every month) can be found helping low-income families, single mothers, seniors, battered women, the homeless, and people dealing with substance misuse. They work at food banks, deliver Christmas hampers to families in need, and assist kids with mental and physical challenges. Last year, Tzu Chi established the Blue Sky Project, which helps vulnerable children in several ways. The Breakfast With Love program feeds elementary- and secondary-school kids throughout the Lower Mainland. Its Summer/Winter Camps program provides bursaries to underprivileged kids. And its Back to School program provides kids with school supplies.

      As part of the group’s medical mission, Tzu Chi offers free traditional Chinese medicine clinics weekly at aboriginal centres and to residents of the Downtown Eastside.

      Taiwanfest organizer Charlie Wu says that Ho’s bringing Tzu Chi to Canada is an outstanding example of the benefits of diversity.

      “Gary has done so many wonderful things for the community,” Wu says. “Caring for others is a very fundamental thing for diversity to work in Canada. I think he’s really demonstrated how newcomers contribute. Seeing the volunteer work is inspiring.”

      At Taiwanfest, the organization will be on hand helping keep the city clean and eliminate waste. It will also host a free traditional Chinese medicine clinic as well as seminars, with consultations and information in English and Mandarin.

      The group will also have a booth set up as a train with three cars: one for happiness, one for energy, and one for beauty. All three come from serving other people, Ho says.

      “When you share love and happiness in action, by paying back, you earn happiness,” he says. “There are people in miserable conditions all over the world, and we help them with gratitude and respect. When they smile, you smile. That’s happiness.”

      Taiwanfest takes place this Saturday to Monday (August 30 to September 1) outside the Vancouver Art Gallery, in the 600 to 800 blocks of Granville Street, and at other downtown locations.

      Follow Gail Johnson on Twitter at @gailjohnsonwork.

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