Taiwan Today
Date: April 11, 2017
“Ex Change,” an award-winning documentary short about a used shoe donation
campaign helping economically disadvantaged Kenyans stamp out parasitic infections and live longer lives, is spotlighting Taiwan’s major role in the initiative and enabling its founders Republic of China (Taiwan) national Yang Yu-jen and his Canadian wife Kara Remley to attract more support for the cause.
According to Yang, many children in the rural regions of Kenya must walk barefoot on rocky dirt roads for hours to attend school. Without shoes, they are susceptible to chigoe fleas, or chiggers, which live in warm, dry soil and burrow into the skin to feed on blood. The bite of the one-millimeter insect causes a variety of ailments, including mild to severe ulceration.
Yang, who lives with his wife in northern Taiwan’s Taoyuan City, learned about the threat posed by chiggers from his father-in-law Allen Remley, a construction technician and former pastor living in Toronto. Remley and likeminded philanthropists build clinics, churches and schools in impoverished regions of the world, including Kenya.
[FULL STORY]