Many of the clients who came to the center these past two years are homeless women who left their families because of difficult family relationships, many have experienced domestic violence. Last year alone, 91% of the cause of homelessness is due to family problems. To address this situation we planned to hold series of seminars that will address this issue. On July 24th, we invited a professional family counselor from Taichung County Center for Family Education, Prof. Yao Xiu Ching (姚秀情) to give us a workshop on Effective Human Communications. Seventy participants from different organizations signed up to attend the workshop. They told us that this theme is vital to their work and ministry. Prof. Yao gave an excellent presentation on the arts of communications. The atmosphere of the day was very animated and participative. She gave us basic exercises to illustrate different ways of communicating and offered techniques on how to develop good bargaining skills. She used different cartoons and life examples to illustrate how human beings communicate. She had every one of us try is to talk with a partner in three different positions: one standing, other sitting; talking back to back and talking facing each other. Professor Yao also helped us practiced talking and listening to each other, alternately. We were able to observe ways and become aware how the other person reacts to our own voice, tone and expressions. The key point in her talk is about self-preservation. In communicating, all human beings desire three things: to love and be loved, to be affirmed and to be listened. Our level of communicating depends on how much we protect these three and how safe we feel to go deep.
