ICDC looks back and plans ahead as it celebrates 40th anniversary

["Taiwan Church News" <enews@pctpress.org>]

3130 Edition

February 20-26, 2012

Church Ministry News

ICDC looks back and plans ahead as it celebrates 40th anniversary

Reported by Simon Lin

Written by Lydia Ma

PCT Indigenous Community Development Center (ICDC) just celebrated its 40th 
anniversary. To mark this occasion, ICDC held a few exhibits across Taiwan 
featuring documentaries, artifacts, and handcrafts to showcase the highlights 
of its ministries in the past 40 years. The purpose for holding these exhibits 
is to raise awareness about ICDC among Christians and encourage churches to 
support the center financially in the years to come. The next exhibit will take 
place in Kaohsiung on March 11 at Yanchen Presbyterian Church.

“Many people are unaware that ICDC is a PCT organization,” said ICDC Director 
Kao Li-hsiang, adding that this was the reason why these cross-country exhibits 
have been held in collaboration with local PCT churches. The exhibits showcase 
how ICDC ministries have helped countless indigenous Taiwanese by funding 
programs, providing social services and indigenous cultural education, and 
defending indigenous peoples’ basic rights. 

Kao underscored that staff at ICDC are extremely grateful to God for helping 
them in their ministries. But she also pointed out that though material 
resources and conditions have improved in most indigenous communities in recent 
years, emotional and spiritual needs continue to be of great concern. For 
example, indigenous youths are easily swept along by prevailing social trends, 
which invariably results in premarital sex, sexual harassment, unwanted 
pregnancies, or homosexuality. Hence, youths need guidance in building strong 
and godly moral values and perspectives. 

After spending 1 year in extended prayer, Kao and her colleagues felt that God 
had called them to start a “purity movement” incorporating the gospel message 
in indigenous communities. Based on this vision, ICDC began to transition 
itself in the past few years by focusing more on children and youth outreach 
ministries and marriage counseling ministries. Staff at ICDC discovered that 
moral decay among indigenous communities could be traced to broken family 
relationships and children needed to be taught from a young age about good 
moral character in order to become responsible adults.

With this in mind, ICDC began to offer after-school classes and “development 
classes” and there are currently 7 indigenous communities offering these 
classes on a regular, weekly basis. In addition, a camp on sexual purity and 
how to interact with members of the opposite sex has been held during winter 
breaks. “If we want to see change in indigenous communities, we must begin by 
transforming families,” said Kao.     

Funding and finances remain the most challenging aspects of managing ICDC, said 
Kao, adding that she and her colleagues oftentimes receive their paychecks 
every 2 or 3 months due to lack of funding. Furthermore, a ground-breaking 
ceremony was held last June at a campground the organization had purchased to 
mark its 40th anniversary, but insufficient human and financial resources has 
delayed construction. ICDC still hopes that the campground can start operations 
soon and become a venue for hosting “Holiness Movement” activities and church 
retreats.

 

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