Guantao Fuzhou organized "Welcome the New Year and Send Love" activity for the Welfare Institute
On January 31, 2024, Guantao Fuzhou Youth Work Committee, organized volunteers, mainly comprised of Guantao young lawyers and employees, to carry out a meaningful activity: entering the welfare institute, to "Welcome the New Year and Send Love". In our philosophy, the first prerequisite to be a good lawyer is to be a kind and warm person. The bigger the brand, the more it should take the initiative to shoulder its social responsibility and participate in the pro bono.
Our target, Fuzhou Second Social Welfare Institute, is the only social welfare institution in Fujian Province that mainly adopts orphans, disabled, mentally retarded people, mainly adopts especially poor and disable people over the age of 18 who are transferred from the Municipal welfare home for children. Most of its "residents" are characterized by their childlike simplicity in mind and temperament, regardless of age, so the social workers of the welfare institute affectionately call them "children."
Roses given to others are fragrant in the hand. Considering the actual needs of the welfare institute in the near future, Guantao Fuzhou Youth Work Committee launched compassion donations, purchased masks and donated to the welfare institute, and provided financial sponsorship for the setting up of the New Year stage of the welfare institute.
What the "children" of the welfare institute need more than donations is company and care. They are eager to be loved, concerned, and respected. Organizing volunteers and the residents to work together is the more important part of this activity. On the day of the activity, our volunteers delivered the handmade DIY materials purchased in advance for the New Year of the Dragon to the welfare institute. With the help of social workers, they carried out a 1 on 1 "Making Crafts Together" activity. Seeing so many colorful handmade materials, the "children" clapped their hands happily and joining hands of their "brothers and sisters" to show their hands-on ability. Surprisingly, their hands-on ability is really great. Under their careful folding and collaging, a variety of New Year's collages and three-dimensional paper works are vividly displayed on the table.
Through such a close exchange, the young volunteers had a better understanding of the real situation of the disabled, but also a more profound feeling. Some lawyers said that their ability to understand the handmade process was actually not as good as that of the "children"; we also learned that among the "children" of the welfare institute, there were some who represented the country in Germany to participate in swimming competitions and achieved good results; What we saw was their efforts to express themselves, and to be treated like normal people.
After the handicrafts session, the volunteers were guided by the social workers of the Welfare Home to visit the special activity rooms of the Welfare Home, such as the Starsnail Dream Factory, the Starsnail Training Room, and the Starsnail Cooking Room. The Welfare Home provides a wealth of disability rehabilitation services in the areas of life language, life mathematics, life adaptation, physical rehabilitation training, work skills, vocational skills training, singing and dancing, painting and handicrafts. It also shows us once again that the social workers and the residents of the Welfare Home are making endless efforts to ensure that the disabled are treated equally.
A "child" said to a lawyer, " I know what the law is.” The lawyer asked her, What is it? She answered, the law means people can't do bad things. The lawyer then asked her, What does the law allow us to do? She blinked and thought for a moment, and replied, we can do good things, to help others.
In the end, we were left with the following reflections: Those we think are in need of help actually want to help others; we send "children" companionship, but "children" send us cleansing; taking social responsibility is not a matter of words, a form, or even a lofty stance, but should be the concept of equality? We really have too much to learn about how to devote ourselves to the public welfare of the future with the right attitude and method. Perhaps, this is the meaning of "jointly building", a two-way meaning.
