
The typhoon to hit Taiwan in recorded history, Morakok buried three elementary schools in the area of Kaohsiung, the island’s second city, with mudslides.
The foundation undertook to rebuild one of them, the Minzu Elementary School. It re-opened on January at a new location, in Shanlin Da Ai Village, which Tzu Chi built for the victims of the typhoon. The inauguration ceremony was attended by Mr. Lin Join-sane, Chief Executive of the Morakot Post-Disaster Reconstruction Council, Mr. Tsai Ching-Hwa, Director-general of Kaohsiung Education Bureau and Ms. Lin Pi-yu, vice-president of the foundation, as well as teachers, students, residents of the village and Tzu Chi volunteers.
The school is one of several construction projects the foundation has undertaken to help the victims of landslides and flooding caused by typhoons and other natural disasters. They include permanent housing communities, to enable residents who lived in unsafe mountainous areas to relocate to lower ground. Namasia was one of the villages devastated; its Minzu Elementary School was buried. The village relocated to another part of the Namasia district to began a new, safer life. For their schooling, students from the village had to commute by shuttle bus for a year to the Cishan Primary School. With the opening of the new school, they will able to go there by foot or bicycle, just as they could in their original home in the mountain area.

The school is a great convenience for the residents of the village. The children can go there a short distance from their homes; their parents can pay close attention when they walk to school and feel at ease about their safety. After school, they can go back to school to play ball, run or exercise. “The future of a country is its human resources, which come from a good education,” said Lin. “The opening of the Minzu Da Ai Elementary School means a bright future for the Shanlin Da Ai Village.”