World Vision activists yesterday spoke about their experiences helping refugees from South Sudan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, detailing the needs and challenges faced as the charity’s Taiwan chapter prepares to hold its annual famine campaign.
World Vision Taiwan’s 29th 30-Hour Famine Hero Rally titled “Act against Hunger” is to begin at noon today in New Taipei City and Kaohsiung. The campaign calls on the public to fast for 30 hours and make donations to help those without sufficient food at home and abroad.
South Sudanese refugee-turned-activist Francis Mading Chol said the civil war that broke out in 2013, two years after the country became independent from Sudan, has caused a humanitarian crisis in his nation.
Over the past five years, about 20,000 people have been killed and the number of refugees has exceeded 3 million, with 1.57 million at home and 2 million fleeing to Sudan, Ethiopia and other neighboring countries, Chol told a news conference in Taipei.
Forcibly displaced from his home in 1996 at the age of 12, during the Second Sudanese Civil War from 1983 to 2005, Chol grew up in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya and decided to return home in 2009 to reunite with his mother, even though he could have moved to Canada.
With financial assistance from charitable organizations, Chol finished college in 2015 and began working in the charity sector.
“Actually, my life story is not that different from other children in South Sudan. It’s an example that you can support a child and when the child grows up and becomes successful, he can support other children,” Chol said.
Ajab-Aram Raquel Macapagat of World Vision Philippines, which is in charge of the organization’s projects in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, home to about 900,000 refugees who have fled violence in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State since August last year, also attended the news conference.
More than 55 percent of the refugees in 30 makeshift settlements are younger than 18 and have little access to basic needs, such as water, sanitation, employment, education and healthcare, Macapagat said.
The needs and vulnerabilities of the refugees are immense, and with the monsoon and cyclone season arriving, they are at major risk from floods and landslides, which could exacerbate the existing public health crisis, Macapagat said.
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
A relatively large earthquake may strike within the next two weeks, following a magnitude 5.2 temblor that shook Taitung County this morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. An earthquake struck at 8:18am today 10.2km west of Taitung County Hall in Taitung City at a relatively shallow depth of 6.5km, CWA data showed. The largest intensity of 4 was felt in Taitung and Pingtung counties, which received an alert notice, while areas north of Taichung did not feel any shaking, the CWA said. The earthquake was the result of the collision between the Philippine Plate and the Eurasian Plate, the agency said, adding
Snow fell in the mountainous areas of northern, central and eastern Taiwan in the early hours of yesterday, as cold air currents moved south. In the northern municipality of Taoyuan, snow started falling at about 6am in Fusing District (復興), district head Su Tso-hsi (蘇佐璽) said. By 10am, Lalashan National Forest Recreation Area, as well as Hualing (華陵), Sanguang (三光) and Gaoyi (高義) boroughs had seen snowfall, Su said. In central Taiwan, Shei-Pa National Park in Miaoli County and Hehuanshan National Forest Recreation Area in Nantou County saw snowfall of 5cm and 6cm respectively, by 10am, staff at the parks said. It began snowing
The 2025 Kaohsiung Wonderland–Winter Amusement Park event has teamed up with the Japanese manga series Chiikawa this year for its opening at Love River Bay yesterday, attracting more than 10,000 visitors, the city government said. Following the success of the “2024 Kaohsiung Wonderland” collaboration with a giant inflatable yellow duck installation designed by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, this year the Kaohsiung Tourism Bureau collaborated with Chiikawa by Japanese illustrator Nagano to present two giant inflatable characters. Two inflatable floats — the main character, Chiikwa, a white bear-like creature with round ears, and Hachiware, a white cat with a blue-tipped tail
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