By Marie-Claude Pelchat | Project Leader
As Sunshine Foundation celebrates its 35th anniversary in 2017, we look at the professionals who help burn survivors move forward on the road towards rehabilitation and recovery.
“Burn survivors are like my family, I care deeply about making sure that the pressure garments they wear are comfortable.”
- Chu-Ying, seamstress
When the Formosa Fun Coast Water Park Dust Explosion occurred on June 27, 2015, Sunshine Foundation knew that a huge number of burn survivors would need pressure garments. Ensuring that our pressure garment production services would be able to keep up with their needs became a crucial issue.
Chu-Ying has been a seamstress at Sunshine Foundation for many years and is responsible for sewing pressure garments. After the Dust Explosion, she ended up making or adjusting over 1,000 garments per month! Despite having to work overtime, feeling exhausted or feeling her whole body ache due to the repeated movements, she kept going, knowing that many burn survivors counted on her. “Trying to keep up with orders was very tiring. However, I just had to stop and think about what the burn survivors were going through and I would feel re-energized because I knew that all of this was for them.”
Before joining Sunshine, Chu-Ying used to make wedding dresses. “Wedding dresses are totally different from pressure garments. You wear your dress once, but burn survivors must wear their garments 23 hours a day, for one to two years. You must pay close attention to every detail because being off by even just 1mm will result in the garment being too tight or too loose.” After 11 years making pressure garments, she still has the same passion.
She’s also committed to sharing her knowledge and skills with colleagues and counterparts abroad. She was one of Sunshine’s trainers sent to Nicaragua between 2011-2014 to train therapists and seamstresses from five Central America countries in making pressure garments.
The thing that she finds the most rewarding in her work is when burn survivors tell her that their pressure garment feels comfortable. That’s when Chu-Ying knows she’s played her part well in the overall rehabilitation of burn survivors.
Thanks to your donation, you make it possible for Chu-Ying to continue devoting herself to bringing the best services to burn survivors in Taiwan!
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