In the News

Shelter teaches skills to autistic youths

• Publication Date：07/29/2010
• Source： Liberty Times

The "Aiken Happy Life Workshop," run by the Taipei Autistic Childrens' Welfare Foundation, opened its doors this week, helping autistic youths learn skills for making a living.

Six young autistic people are working there to make nutritious mantou (Chinese steamed buns) by hand, and to prove that they can put their talents to good use, thus putting their shut-out past behind them.

"Xiao Wei," 30, would stare at people dressed in black clothing, and was therefore often mistakenly believed to be a sexual predator. He used to work in a factory, but was fired by a boss confused at seeing him throw away everything that was black.

When Xiao Wei first arrived at the workshop, he was a problem just as he had been at his previous workplace. He would become upset if he saw a mantou that did not look quite right to him, and throw it out. In particular, the mantou made using milk were a trial, since if he saw a single bubble in the mass, he would think it was contamination and poke holes in the surface of the mantou to try to get it out, leaving the product looking like the cratered surface of the moon.

However, his job coach simply moved him far away from the "milk mantou" after figuring out what was setting him off, and put him to work instead making whole-grain mantou. He also taught Xiao Wei to operate another machine so that he could work in a mantou factory.

Director Ke Pai-shan of the foundation said that in the eyes of most people, autistic children act strangely because of their fixation on different objects. The workshop members, however, work in a different environment entirely. Some love to grab jobs, and others cannot roll up mantou but are sensitive to the time requirements of their leavening. With patient guidance from coaches, however, all of the clients can bring their full potential into play.

(This article originally appeared in The Liberty Times July 28.)