One thing I love about life is that people are simply incredible beings. The stories we write, movies we watch, plays we act and canvases we cover are derived our human experience – the often incredible courage and faith and the remarkable way that events link together, the wild dreams and even the sometimes mundane details of turning them into reality. Life in this constant balance of inspiration and normalcy.
I’ve had the great blessing to be in a line of work that allows me to meet some of the people who are the dream-makers. The men and the women who couple passion, hope and perseverance and away they go.
Twenty years ago, Cao-Ching retired early from his position as a public servant in search of a deeper calling to serve God and his country. Without a clear leading, he reflected on it for about a year, seeking some divine guidance to raise the need he could address in Taiwanese society. The answer he received wasn’t a high profile or glamorous cause: he would dedicate the rest of his life to caring for people in a Permanent Vegetative State (PVS).
His faith took him on a 4-year trek around his country, knocking on doors to raise awareness, enlist support and collect donations for the work. With the cause relatively unknown in Taiwanese society at that time, he got little response. In fact, he only managed to recruit 700 supporters in those four years. That’s only about one person every two days. Still, he persisted.
After four years, he was able to rent some space in an old building by Taipei Main Station in downtown Taipei. The first bed he used to comfort his first patient was an old bureau that he converted to suit its new function. They still have it in the center. It moved me to see this humble piece of furniture, which he saw as the first step to a work that would affect the lives of thousands of people around the island. Visionaries see the unseen.
Cao-Ching opened his first center with an annual budget of about $30,000. 20 years later, the Genesis Social Welfare Foundation has 12 PVS centers, expanded to address the needs of the elderly and homeless and now operates on $60,000 a day. It’s the 6th largest NGO in Taiwan and has three more centres under development at the moment.
From a seed of inspiration, Cao-Ching followed his calling in faith and his actions brought the PVS issue to national recognition and demonstrated the massive potential of a fully-committed individual.
How does one respond to a life like that? For me, it begs the question of my own life: How committed am I to anything in my life? Would I drop everything if I got a sense of specific purpose for my life?
It becomes more and more obvious to me the level of commitment that is necessary to bring real constructive social change to the world. It’s a level of trust and discipline most find far too costly to be worth the sacrifice. But all important things require sacrifice at some point. In the end, its far more about willingness than what is sacrificed. The unique power of the spirit over the material
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Beautiful post. "But all important things require sacrifice at some point." Whether in business or in the social sector, I think humans universally identify with this notion. What's interesting is what we define as the "important things" - here, meaning social change. I often wonder about the different motivations to change the world for good, especially when we encounter one failure after another. It seems as though the world is against us in many respects. Is the unique power of the human spirit all that's required? Why do some feel this more than others?
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