GN woman heads disaster aid group

Richard Tedesco

As a practicing Buddhist, Lillian Kuo said the concept of “compassion relief” articulated in Tzu Chi resonated with her.

So in 1995 Kuo started a support group of 30 women who met at her Great Neck home and donated $15 a month to help victims of natural disasters throughout the world.

Today, Kuo said, the Long Island branch of Tzu Chi, based at 60 East Williston Avenue in East Williston, has 500 volunteers in Nassau and Suffolk counties involved in the organization’s international and domestic relief efforts. 

The organization maintains branch offices in 55 countries and has responded to the scenes of disasters in 75 countries since its founding in Taiwan in 1966. 

“We try to relieve suffering to help others. ” said Kuo, who is now Tzu Chi director of charity in the western region of Long Island.

In the wake of the hurricane that devastated Haiti, Kul said Tzu Chi volunteers built schools there. In the wake of the tsunami in the South Pacific, Tzu chi volunteers rebuilt an entire town in Indonesia, picking up wood strewn by the tsunami to build furniture as part of what the organization called the “Greater Love Housing Project.” 

“Anywhere there is disaster, we go there,” Kuo said. “We study their need to do what we can to help them.”

Kuo said Tzu Chi was among the first organizations to respond to the World Trade Tower attacks 11 years ago, collaborating with the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, giving $1,000 to each family who lost a loved one and providing financial aid to those who lost jobs as a result of the attacks.

Tzu Chi Foundation’s four major missions comprise charity, medicine, education, and spreading humanitarian culture. Kuo said the foundation’s mission is based on Buddha’s principles of benevolence, joy and total dedication.

Groups of Tzu Chi physicians, which include many areas of medical specialization, travel to countries where natural disasters have taken place to offer free medical treatment. The organization maintains the third largest bone marrow registry in the world in the U.S. and the U.K., Kuo said.

“We want harmony in our society. We are just like a big family. That’s why we send everyone where there is disaster,” she said.

Over the past several years, Tzu Chi has established ties to local charities, running soup kitchens at the Interfaith Nutritional Network in Hempstead and at St. Anne’s Church in Brentwood. Its volunteers regularly entertain senior residents of the Holly Patterson Geriatric Center at the Parker Jewish Institute and also provide volunteer care for patients at St. Catherine’s Nursing Home in Smithtown.

“We all learn to be a better person by helping others,” Kuo said.

More information about the Tzu Chi Foundation is available online at www.us.tzuchi.org/us/en/. Anyone interested in becoming a Tzu Chi volunteer can contact the Long Island branch at 516-873-6888. 

Kuo said the Long Island branch is particularly in need of Spanish-speaking people to help in the organization’s work.

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