At Eden, we have been dedicating ourselves to advocate and take action based on CRPD for years. We put all our efforts to make sure that persons with disabilities could equally enjoy their lives to the fullest. In Article 30 of CRPD[1] , persons with disabilities shall be ensured of taking part on an equal basis with others in cultural life, recreation, leisure, and sport. Base on that, we initiated a special photo shooting project for residences in the Yilan Education and Nursing Institute of Eden Social Welfare Foundation. In this project, we hope to provide a special memory for residences as well as for their families.

At Eden, we focus on both residents' physical and mental health. Thus we organized interesting activates from time to time for them to enjoy their lives in all aspects. On the eve of Mother's Day, Eden's Yilan Education and Nursing Institute carried out a special project: glamour photo shooting for the residents. The residences have been put on lovely makeup, accessories and wore the beautiful gowns and suits while the professional photographer took their photos. Being dressed up is not a common experience for most of us, not to mention those residences in the institution. This was an extraordinary and exciting experience for them.

"These dresses are all so beautiful that I can hardly choose between them."

Anecstatic experience

We could tell that they enjoyed the whole process very much. After the photo shooting, residences didn't change back to their casual clothes or took off their jewelry immediately as they were still appreciating how they looked when they were dressed up. We asked them to whom they would like to show their photos. Four of them replied in unison: "I want to show it to my daughter/son!" The children of these residences are all adults now. Some will come to visit their mothers on free time, and some of them also have physical or mental disabilities and live in the institution with them.

Except for a few residents who got married had the wedding photo shooting experience, most of the residents are single and have no experience of glamour photo shooting. Whether they have or have not that experience, this project brought a very ecstatic experience for them.

It was not easy to take this type of picture for nearly 200 residents in the institute. Eden's Yilan Education and Nursing Institute has done great teamwork to coordinate staffs across the departments in order to complete this one-month shooting plan successfully.

A glimpse of the different appearances of the residents

All residents felt refreshed after being dressed up and looked great in the photos. We noticed a very interesting situation: some residents, who were usually very active and restless, suddenly become calm and still after changing their dresses, and following the photographer's instructions very well during the photo-taking process. What an interesting and amazing change.

These precious photos will be assembled into a film, and be given to the families of the residents as the Mother's Day gift. When families miss the residences, they could either visit them or look at the album. With these albums, families can be assured that residences are well cared both physically and mentally. Also, we hope those photos could bring precious memory for those residences and their families.