Cathy Teng / photos by Jimmy Lin / tr. by David Mayer

At the demo farm, TTM mission leader Dominick Lee (right) and technician Tseng Jen-hui (left) introduce new farming techniques to improve the incomes of local farmers.

Anumber of social service organizations from Taiwan were very active in the Philippines in 2023. One is the Taiwan Technical Mission in the Philippines, which built on successful experience in Taiwan to improve the lives of local farmers at a recently established demonstration farm. Another is the Taiwan Fund for Children and Families Philippines, which worked with residents to build community resilience. And thirdly, Tzu Chi Philippines provided volunteer medical services to countless persons in need, which Tzu Chi has been doing there for about 30 years now.

Demonstration farm launched

A demonstration farm of the Taiwan Technical Mission (TTM) in the Philippines formally opened on December 15, 2023 in Tarlac City. The farm is a collaborative project between the Taiwan International Cooperation and Development Fund and the Department of Agriculture of the Philippines, and is expected to improve the incomes of local farmers. Says Tarlac provincial governor Susan Yap: “This is the best possible Christmas present for the people of Tarlac Province.”

The demonstration farm comprises open-air fields and two smart greenhouses. Dominick Lee, leader of TTM in the Philippines, takes us on a tour of the farm as he explains the difficult situation for agriculture in the country. The Philippines has a summer climate all year round, varying only between a rainy season (May–October) and a dry season (November–April). Typhoons, averaging 20 per year, have a huge impact on agricultural production. Says Lee: “Underdeveloped infra­structure means that parts of the country without access to any irrigation system must rely on rain for a water supply. As a result, agricultural production in the Philippines is always insufficient.”

Under the Taiwan Technical Mission’s guidance, farmers have already raised three crops in rotation, quickly generating cash income.

Sharing Taiwan’s experience

The TTM has a number of different tasks. The first is to improve the quantity and quality of crops. The second is to change the cultivation methods employed by local farmers. And tasks in a third area touch upon various issues involving marketing and sales.

There are some issues that face all farmers alike, such as how to use pesticides and fertilizers, and how to manage fields. TTM team members hope to communicate new concepts and demonstrate new cultivation methods to encourage farmers to adopt new routines, such as making reasonable use of fertilizers and increasing their use of organic composting. He emphasizes: “We don’t ask farmers to go fully organic, but if they shift in that general direction, the land will repay them for their efforts.”

At present the TTM is working on testing and demonstration that involve the cultivation of bitter melon, sponge gourd, and bell peppers. Lee explains: “We’re looking at the crops they currently plant, and among them we’re trying to identify varieties that are especially resistant to local climate conditions, to give farmers more varieties to choose from. Also we’re working to provide farmers with new ways to manage crop cultivation, so they can deal more successfully with floods, droughts, pests and diseases.”

The greenhouses not only provide protection from typhoons, they are an important part of typhoon preparedness. Lee explains: “There are many typhoons in the Philippines, but before a typhoon hits we already start growing seedlings in the greenhouses. As soon as the typhoon moves on we can provide greenhouse seedlings to farmers so they can get crops growing again as quickly as possible. This reduces breaks in supply to a minimum, and enables farmers to get crops to market before others do.”

Instruction in smart farming

We jump in a car and head to Tabon San Jose Farmers’ Association in Pampanga, where we are met by TTM project coordinator Tom Peng and a group of farmers’ association members. They take us on a tour to see what they’ve achieved under the TTM’s guidance.

Peng says that cabbage and bitter melon are the farmers’ association’s main crops, and comments: “The TTM provides farmers with guidance to help them increase production.” We see a number of low parallel berms rigged up with overhead gourd netting. Growing on the ground beneath the netting are cabbages, while bitter melon vines pop up from among the cabbages and latch onto the netting. Peng explains: “We double up on our use of fields in this way because, for one thing, small farmers don’t have big fields. We use this method to increase income per unit of land and maximize land utilization.”

The TTM has helped local farmers to set cultivation schedules based on crop rotation. One benefit of such schedules is that different crops are vulnerable to different pests and diseases, so sticking to a well-conceived schedule can reduce the use of agrochemicals. Peng explains that agriculture is a specialty that requires careful thought to avoid risks. In addition to climate risks, a farmer must also consider prices. Starting from January 2023, the farmers’ association raised a crop of bitter melons from February through May and a crop of tomatoes from July through October, and then planted a crop of asparagus beans in November. Says Peng: “The knowledge we’re sharing with them is nothing flashy by any means. We’re just coming up with ways to adjust crop schedules. It’s all about working smart.”

Farmers participating in the project are required to keep digital records. The technical mission set up a weather station to collect data from the fields on micro­climate factors such as sunlight, humidity, and temperature. After the end of each crop season, Peng calls a meeting to explain and analyze the farmers’ data in conjunction with the meteorological data, and to record the prices that the crops fetched on the market.

It is true that high-tech equipment is used in Taiwan’s agricultural sector, but Peng points out that shipping such equipment off to the Philippines at this point would not be workable because farmers there wouldn’t be able to afford it. Peng’s strategy is to seek maximum return from minimum investments, so that local farmers can reap palpable benefits. Marlene Galvan Bernardino, representative of the Tabon San Jose Farmers’ Association, tells us that within a very short time after they began receiving guidance from the TTM, they were seeing more cash flowing in. She has often been invited to speak about how her farmers’ association has benefited by doing the data recording requested by the TTM. Two women farmers in their 30s say that they’ve worked overseas in the past but have now returned to their hometown, joined the TTM project, are learning field management skills, and have become their own bosses. They are now earning more income, so this is a career they are willing to pursue.

A patient waiting for surgery has a tag over his right eye with some basic information on his condition. We ask if we can take a photo, and he gives his good-natured consent.

Serving where needs are most urgent

The Taiwan Fund for Children and Families Philippines (TFCF Philippines) was established in November 2019, and branch director Kelly Chang took up her position there that December. She toured local communities in search of families in need of assistance, and began establishing ties with local government agencies, never imagining that a series of calamities would strike early the following year.

In January 2020, the Taal Volcano erupted not far south of Manila, and then in February the Covid-19 pandemic broke out.

The Addition Hills district of Mandaluyong City is the part of Manila where TFCF Philippines is most actively involved. Addition Hills is a low-income district with a population of 410,000. Chang recalls that the Covid-19 breakout was overwhelming. The Philippine government announced on March 12 that community quarantine measures would be implemented in Metro Manila on March 15. In two very hectic days, Chang and her team gathered all the disease control supplies and food they could find and distributed them to over 80 needy families on March 14.

The following day, the city went into lockdown.

The lockdown was not lifted until late May, more than two months later, but the government continued to prohibit indoor gatherings. When Chang went out to distribute goods a second time on June 2, she discovered swarms of people wandering in the streets and learned that a huge fire had destroyed 900 residences just the night before, leaving over 4,000 people homeless.

“I was still dealing with Covid, and then that huge fire hit the community, which really impressed upon us just how deeply the community is affected by a plethora of disasters. Since that time, TFCF Philippines has been working to build community resilience.”

Building community resilience

TFCF Philippines primarily concerns itself with caring for needy children, but even mere survival is problematic in the Philippines, so TFCF Philippines decided to shift some of its resources for use in environmental improvements, and in conducting empowerment programs for local parents. Says Chang: “These parents live in the community. They are our eyes and ears on the streets, and they can really help us with our outreach efforts.”

When TFCF Philippines first started contacting borough heads, town halls, and the like, local authorities were aloof, and showed little interest in cooperating with them. Chang had to make cold calls to fire stations and work with them to provide local parents with disaster readiness training. Thanks to her dogged determination, local government authorities gradually came to see that TFCF Philippines was serious about assisting local communities. The disaster preparedness divisions of town halls started allocating resources to provide support, and helped produce community maps to help residents be more ready to respond to fires. TFCF Philippines has also asked government agencies to collaborate in the renovation of dilapidated old housing, replacing highly inflammable wooden buildings with structures built from concrete.

Chang explains: “The role of TFCF Philippines is to be a platform for integrating resources from different sources and delivering them to communities.” On November 19, 2022, TFCF Philippines put on a first-ever ­exhibit of its activities in the Philippines. The event was carried out with generous support from Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The exhibit took the form of a stage performance using props created by locals, before an audience of more than 300 people. The performances depicted measures taken by TFCF Philippines to improve fire safety and community resilience, and the effect was quite moving. As TFCF CEO Rick Chou has said: “Our staff are able to ­provide the most direct and meaningful services because they’re actually present on the ground and understand local needs.”

Dr. Alfredo Li, director of the Tzu Chi Eye Center, frequently makes friendly small talk with people in Tagalog. The Eye Center is busy, but the atmosphere is always cheerful.

Free clinical services

We proceed early one morning to the Buddhist Tzu Chi Campus in the Santa Mesa district of Manila, and find a long line of people waiting to get into the Tzu Chi Eye Center. Center director Dr. Alfredo Li appears from the crowd and speaks to us at length about the center’s free clinical services: “Many people start waiting in line at five o’clock in the morning. We have about 200 people waiting here today.”

While speaking with us, Dr. Li frequently breaks into Tagalog to chat with clinic visitors.

“Tzu Chi has provided free clinical services in the Philippines for 28 years. We’ve been to absolutely ­every part of the country. In all, we conducted some 250 large-scale free clinics, but then Master Cheng Yen told us we needed a permanent place where people could come to us, so we found a plot of land and set up permanent operations here. In terms of staffing, we were strongest in the field of ophthalmology, so that’s where we got our start, and we’ve been running the Eye Center for 17 years now.”

No patient can be turned away

Meanwhile, Dr. Josefino C. Qua has just finished up with a morning surgery and rushes to the campus to meet with us. But some other Tzu Chi members first talk to us about the early days at Tzu Chi Philippines. In a long-ago meeting, the first CEO spoke of wanting to provide medical services, and Dr. Qua’s mother, who was a Tzu Chi commissioner, raised her hand and said her son was a doctor. Qua, who thus far hasn’t joined in our conversation, breaks in with a quip: “And just like that, my mother donated me to Tzu Chi.”

He goes on to describe the early days of the free clinics, and says they just had to make do with very limited resources. They held clinics in borrowed schoolrooms, conducted operations on office desks, and unscrewed wall lamps to set up surgical lighting. To find surgical patients, they asked clinic visitors, “Where are you from? How about we go there?” And so they trekked long distances with large teams to provide services across the land.

Tzu Chi began providing free clinical services in the Philippines in 1995, and the undertaking went so successfully that Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation CEO Lin Chin-Lon was prompted to personally travel to the Philippines and see for himself the secret of their success. “It really was a makeshift operation, but they did an outstanding job.”

Tzu Chi’s free clinical services have since expanded from the Philippines to many other countries around the world. The members of the Tzu Chi International Medical Association (TIMA), all of whom are doctors who take part in the free clinics, return to Hualien in Taiwan each year at the time of the Mid-Autumn Festival to spend the holidays together with Master Cheng Yen. This annual tradition first started with doctors providing free clinical services in the Philippines, and it later became a tradition among TIMA physicians throughout the world. Lin says: “It is really quite scintillating to get together with others from all over the world to share our thoughts and insights. Some people have to travel 40 hours to get back, but they’re only too happy to make the trip.”

Dr. Qua notes that teams at the free clinics in the Philippines have seen lots of truly horrific cases, and he explains that people who lack funds to see a doctor often put off getting a minor problem treated until it becomes a big problem. That is why, when a free clinic travels to remote areas, the doctors try to see absolutely as many patients as possible. When they take off, they don’t want to leave disappointed local residents untreated.

On October 1, 2023, Master Cheng Yen gave her blessings to a plan by Tzu Chi Philippines to build a new hospital there.

There had actually been plans in place for some years to build a new hospital. Qua asks me to take a close look at the letters after his name on his business card—MD, MBA, MHM. The “MD” stands for “Doctor of Medicine,” “MBA” for “Master of Business Administration,” and “MHM” for “Master of Hospital Management.” It must have been fate, he says, that he should have acquired all the necessary qualifications in advance to run the new hospital. “I had always thought it was something for my next life, not this one.” Speaking in Hokkien, a smile of satisfaction steals across his face. At age 70, he is preparing to lead the establishment of a new hospital, but he emphasizes: “After we’ve built the hospital we’ll be able to treat patients at a permanent location, but we’ll go on providing traveling free clinical services because there are still people who can’t come to Manila for treatment. We still have to go to them.”

For more pictures, please click 《Service in the Philippines: Taiwan Lends a Helping Hand》

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