Taiwan Love and Hope Association was founded in 1999. It is the first advocacy group in southern Taiwan promoting the prevention and control of HIV and AIDS. Love and Hope is also one of the very few NGOs that concerns about substance use and abuse issues in southern Taiwan. Our team members include professionals from various disciplines: health, medicine, counselling and social work.
Our core value and beliefs are respect, care and acceptance from a humanitarian perspective. Our main tasks include disease prevention and communication, companionship and care, client empowerment, and education for infected persons. We care about infection and transmission of HIV, and provide comprehensive service and support. We promote and advocate for HIV prevention to raise awareness and understanding of HIV/AIDS in the general public.
We established the first LGBTQ center, “Sunshine Queer Center” in 2010 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Next, we established “South Rainbow Street NO.6” in Tainan in 2012, funded by local government. In our LGBTQ community and health service centers, we provide public talks related to health, in-depth interviews, online interaction, community outreach, medical referral, telephone counseling and other services.
Despite LGBTQ-related issues being marginal in Taiwan society, we believe that it is a human right issue that concerns everyone. Via community mobilization, our job is to form an important platform for LGBTQ groups.
In 2017, we established HERO (Healing, Empowerment, Recovery Of Chemsex), an integrated health center that takes care of sex health and substance use issues. In response to the rising trend of chemsex (use of recreational drugs during sex) in the community, we aim to provide a friendly, integrated, rapid and innovative health service in a safe and welcoming environment. Our healthcare model is “treatment”, “rehabilitation” and “empowerment.”
HERO is different from traditional HIV/STD care center. We provide a safe STD treatment environment that offers screening, treatment and prevention for a variety of STDs and HIV, chemsex counselling, substance use treatment, and the prescription of PEP and PrEP. Our concept is to integrate substance use treatment, rehabilitation and empowerment, and to create a rapid and convenient treatment environment. Most important of all, we expect all potential clients with health risks can receive the right care in the shortest possible time.
