...What do you do if you feel like your life is falling apart? If you feel you are losing everything you and your life stood for…..children, husband, mother security! As one woman to another I ask you –is there anything you can do to help someone feeling total despair?
Thousands of women in Hong Kong today are faced with the task of rebuilding lives shattered by relationship breakdown. I urgently need your help to ensure that the SoulTalk Foundation is able to continue to help them pick up the pieces.
This is the most important letter I have ever written. In Hong Kong today thousands of women are falling through the cracks in our system. They are abandoned by friends and family as lives carefully built over decades dissolve, leaving them all too often with only a few dollars in their pockets - and unsure even if they will have a bed for the night.
This is why it is so important that I ask for your help today.
SoulTalk is the only organisation in Hong Kong where these women can go for help. I need your kind donation of $300, $500 or even an extremely generous gift of $1,000 to make sure I am able to offer the vital support to help these women come to terms with the crisis in their life and rebuild for a successful future.
I need to raise $100,000 to ensure that we are able to offer help when and where it is needed for as many women as possible.
All too often these voices go unheard; people are too embarrassed to ask for help, or they simply do not know where to turn. As the Founder of SoulTalk Foundation, I desperately wish there was no need for our work. However the tragic fact remains that everyday women come to us in emotional turmoil with literally nowhere else to go for help. I cannot let them down.
I need you to imagine what it would feel like if your world was shattered. Imagine if a husband or wife of ten, twenty or more years suddenly left. Imagine if all that emotional investment was gone, if your financial security evaporated, your home was at risk or, and this is the most tragic of all, if your children were suddenly ripped away from you.
Thankfully there is hope.
Having experienced such a trauma myself, I established SoulTalk in 1992 to ensure that no-one in Hong Kong need go through what I did, alone. With a team of dedicated and highly skilled individuals we are here to offer urgently needed practical and emotional support through these dark hours and beyond. It is not just about helping people to survive those first terrible days and weeks, but to help them come to terms with their situation and take the steps necessary to rebuild and enhance their lives in the present and future.
I want to tell you about a call I received recently from a woman….. I will call her Jane to protect her privacy. It is a story that is typical of the women we help here at SoulTalk and frankly it is tragic.
Jane’s husband came home one evening and told her she had until the weekend to get out the house. This was a blow from nowhere. They had been married for fifteen years, together for longer. All the emotional investment of a relationship of this length had gone, literally in a conversation lasting thirty seconds. He had found someone new.
The situation in itself is difficult and would come close to crushing even the strongest of us, but in Jane’s case it was worse, there was a level of cruelty in how her husband approached things that, however many times I have heard similar stories, I find hard to believe.
Tragically it was Jane’s children who were used to magnify this cruelty. Jane had chosen to make her two beautiful children aged 10 and 12 the priority in her life. She had given up her career to make sure that she was always there for them. She made them breakfast, took them on the bus to school every morning, ferried them to music lessons and made sure they were safely in their beds every night.
She had been a wonderful mother. But she was terrified that all this was going to change.
Like many women in seemingly happy and stable marriages she had no financial independence. Bills and savings were simply something her husband took care of.
Jane’s house was also in her husband’s name. Overnight she was faced with the prospect of losing her only known income, her house and most desperate of all, her husband was telling her that as she had no means to support them, he was taking the children too.
I remember her phone call well
“How can I keep my children? Who can I turn to for help? What on earth can I tell my family and friends? What do I do first? Will the courts really take my children away from me? How has this happened?”
It was a series of painful questions and ones with no easy answers.
I have made a commitment that however traumatic these questions are, SoulTalk and our team of Professionals and trained volunteers will be there to help. No one will feel alone again! Please join in our commitment by sending your gift of HK$300, HK$500 of even HK$1000 dollars as soon as you can.
I am really proud that SoulTalk was able to help Jane to begin her healing process to regain some structure of her life. Our Women’s Centre in Sheung Shui houses a vital bilingual Hotline service that can offer instant options and choices. It also provides a base for women like Jane to visit our counsellors and share her experiences because the pain is so overwhelming. Sometimes it is something as simple as knowing someone will listen, really care and understand. SoulTalk is able to offer empathy and guidance, from the start to the time you are secure and happy again. Even if that means holding someone’s hand going to a Lawyer’s Office, Legal Aid or to prepare for a Mediation meeting or court case.
To pick up Jane’s story from where she found the courage to dial our Hotline………
“I was amazed to have someone on the phone straight away and it was wonderful to speak to a woman who I knew was able to empathise with me and understand just how desperate I felt. She made me feel like I mattered and shared some very useful information and I could feel my self belief come to life again. The phone call gave me some really practical things to do straight away.
In less than 24 hours, SoulTalk staff had come with me to a lawyer’s office where they were able to get me free legal support by helping also with the whole daunting experience of filling out forms for Legal Aid. I was amazed that they were also able to offer me somewhere to live temporarily totally free of charge with meals included. My children and I spent some time at SoulTalk’s Loving Home where we were surrounded by professional and caring staff through what was an incredibly upsetting time for my children”
Our Loving Home is another of our much used and highly effective services that your donation of HK$300 or HK$500 today will certainly help to support.
Sometimes a phone call or a counselling session just isn’t enough. Often women contact us only at the point where they literally have nowhere to sleep for the night – sometimes, they simply cannot go home because they fear the physical or emotional abuse that awaits them. Our Loving Home is a beautiful place, calm and quiet. A cool, caring place from immediate problems and a sanctuary from which to start to take the practical and emotional steps needed to rebuild a life.
We are able to take 20 women at any one time for stays as short as two days and as long as several months. Sometimes it is a weekend away from a stressful situation, sometimes a longer term stay. What it always is, is a safe and empathetic environment offering counselling, educational programs, therapeutic and learning activities as well as a process for moving forward.
I urgently need to be able to raise more money to ensure that our Loving Home, our Women’s Centre and all our free services are able to continue and develop offering a lifeline to thousands of women in crisis each year. That is why your gift is so important and I hope you will help me to reach my target of $100,000 by making your gift today.
It is too early to say how long Jane will take to feel happy again as most of her life as she knew it has been taken from her. Rebuilding one’s life is done step by step and each woman heals differently. Again she tells it so much better in her own words.
“SoulTalk was the only place that offered solutions and choices with understanding and empathy. There was no judgement, just plenty of sharing based on my own needs and wants. I was in so much pain. So much pain I found it impossible to look beyond my immediate situation. SoulTalk had the exact balance of friendship, understanding and professional expertise I needed to begin my recovery.
They were available whenever I needed them – they were there to talk to when I was upset and to hold my hand and help me find the strength to deal with every painful part. I am so, so grateful.
The future is looking good for me and my wonderful children. I have a little home and I am receiving child maintenance. I am working part time around the needs of my kids and the three of us are moving forward and doing our best.
I don’t believe we would be here without SoulTalk’s attention and care”
I do worry that without the support of people like you, SoulTalk will struggle to be there for the thousands of other women like Jane in Hong Kong today.
Times are tough at the moment. Whilst worries about the economy make fundraising more difficult, I am sure you will understand that it makes my job even more important. These trying times place ever increasing pressure on relationships. I know we are going to get busier. Please offer your support to SoulTalk now to make sure we can rise to these challenges.
HK$300 helps us to accompany someone to a lawyer’s office to support them in the steps they need to take to maintain contact with their deeply loved children.
HK$500 can help us keep the hotline open and train our volunteers to be able to offer the right support as soon as it is needed.
HK$1000 supports the costs of keeping the doors of our Loving Home open, providing safe accommodation and meals to women with nowhere else to go for a roof over their head and exactly the support they need in these difficult times.
I do hope you can help. The unspoken need in Hong Kong is vast.
SoulTalk has the expertise and skill to make a difference, to rebuild devastated lives. I do hope you are able to show your support by sending SoulTalk a gift today.
Thank you so much!
Yours sincerely
Andrea Gutwirth
Founder
PS Thousands of women in Hong Kong are facing the devastating effects of relationship breakdown. They are often left with just a few dollars n their pocket and unsure even of where they will be spending the night. All too often they face the very real prospect of losing their much loved children. Please help SoulTalk help more women rebuild their lives by sending us a gift of $300, $500 or $1000 today. We all need to dig deep………..for strength, courage and making a donation that will make a difference to a woman today!
Donations via PayPal
All donations of HK$100 and above are tax deductible and you will receive a receipt if you send us your name and address.
andrea@soultalk.org or English Tel: (852)2525 6644 Chinese Tel: (852)2659 9211
OR:
Other Donations Methods: (please include your return address for tax receipt)
SoulTalk Bank Account: HSBC
Account #: 502 156524 838
Swift Code: HSBCHKHHHKH
Cheque Payable to: SoulTalk Foundation
Mail to: 2 Upper Albert Road, Ridley House, Suite 302, Central, Hong Kong
Online Banking / Telegraphic Transfer: SoulTalk Foundation HSBC Head Office, 1 Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong Account #502 156524 838
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Thank You
THANK YOU VERY MUCH!
SoulTalk is delighted and humbled to have YOU as a new member of our family.
May we always brighten YOUR day!
Take Care,
Andrea
Founder and Executive Director
SoulTalk
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