Fathers’ Dream—the Elementary School built by Stamps

　　Father Heyndrickx said, ‘Although Church does not have enough money to build the school, we have many friends in other countries. Then, we started to write more than a hundred letters and even more than thousands of letters to our friends in Belgium. After we copied the letter and signed each one, those letters were sent to our family, neighbors, and friends. In those letters, we told them that we would like to build an elementary school for those children whom we have met in Taiwan. If you were rich enough, you can donate more. If you were not that rich, you can donate some, depending on your financial situation.’ Although the money they donated was not much, they were willing to help and agreed with the work. In addition, we also wrote to several elementary schools in Belgium and asked those children who were at the same age of you to raise funds for us. After those children donated the money to our school, I mailed stamps to them in order to appreciate their help. Therefore, we asked our friends in Taiwan to collect stamps for us. For example, we held a student association in order to collect stamps from friends in the association. If the stamps from the student association were not enough, we would collect stamps by buying used stamps. We collected around ten thousands of stamps which we put into small bags to send to those who donated money to our school. The amount of the stamps we sent was according to the amount of the money they donated. After several years, we got enough funds we needed and also sent those friends a large amount of stamps and thousands of letters. At that time, we raise around two millions NT dollars and then bought the land for building the school. The land includes the one of the church opposite here which was a vacancy before.

 Foreign Children saved their allowance—built up the first building of Yu Jen

　　In 1966, Father Stuyck came to Taiwan from America and began to prepare for building Yu Jen Catholic Elementary School after he gain Master Degree in Education. The first building was under Father Stuyck's supervision and part of its funds was from the donation of European and American Church by means of writing around a million letters. Moreover, a third grade student from a Catholic Elementary School in New York impressed Father Stuyck most. The student donated eighty US dollars by saving his allowance under the lead of his teacher Mr. Ruth and mailed a whole-class picture. After looking back into the past years and thinking of the present, we understand that it is because the great efforts made by predecessors that Yu Jen can develop so successfully. People said, ‘When you drink the water, remember the spring.’ Yu Jen has been grown up and like a big tree under which we can relax. Please do not forget predecessors’ efforts.

Receipt became tiles

　　In 1996, teachers and students of Yu Jen held a movement ‘building the school’—that is, the slogan of the movement was ‘Let's transform small stamps into tiles and Let's work together to build our school.’ All students can feel that the construction of the school was huge and showed the principal that they did not know what they can contribute to the work. After discussing with teachers, students held a movement of donation of receipts. Along with the construction of the buildings, everyone made more efforts. The funds for building the school were finally enough by means of everyone's efforts in fund-raising. Finally, after Principal Shi Li Lan visited many famous school architectures in Europe and the United States, the architect designed short, mid, and long term construction by integrating the art of Asian School architecture. The concept of the construction is based on a tree-like and big building and represents the special history and Catholic background of Yu Jen. We hope that the buildings can create a space showing an atmosphere in accordance with natural and represent a tree-like non-finite and finalize school space. Due to the cooperation of architect Bo Wen Tsai and Li Mao Shang, Yu Jen tree which keeps breathing to grow up is rooted deeply, keeps flourishing, faces sunshine, and absorbs rains and dews to grow up strongly and have great shade.