Club President Patricia Lo (L), Service Chair Sylvia Chang (C) and Club Treasurer Chin-Hui Shih posing at the make-shift clinic in a community activity center. Past International Director Hsin-Hsin Yang and Zi-Rou Zhong, the Golden Z Club of New Dawn's vice president, were also in the Zonta supportive group.

Zonta Club of Taipei II supports university volunteer programs

Last week, the Zonta Club of Taipei II, Republic of China (Taiwan), and its Golden Z Club of New Dawn joined a summer volunteer program at the Taipei Medical University. University students organized the program to provide medical services for indigenous people and educational camps to school children in remote areas.

For more than 40 years, the university has been running these summer and winter volunteer service programs. However, due to COVID-19, the programs were conducted virtually in the past two years. This summer was the first time the university resumed in-person volunteer work, with a total of 12 teams visiting different parts of Taiwan.

The clubs were one of the sponsors of the 80-member team serving the indigenous areas, which consisted of 40 students and 40 medical volunteers such as doctors, dentists, pharmacists and chiropractors. The team practiced on-site and gave consultations to the inhabitants of various mountainous villages in central Taiwan for 11 days. 

The students also organized summer camps for children. The Taipei-based Medtecs Group donated US $7,000 worth of personal protective items such as facial masks and shields, protective clothing and sanitizers to 12 of the volunteer teams. The clubs joined the students in the last two days of the service on 9-10 Aug, attending a summer camp at Lushan Elementary School and talking to the indigenous women who claimed to have suffered from family violence.