【Target Audience】Family members of organ donors, who often face ongoing mental health challenges, with 56% experiencing psychological issues and worried about their loved ones' afterlife.

【Action】We provide Paper Organs to family members, enabling them to ceremonially burn Paper Organs for donors. This ritual helps alleviate their self-blame regarding the incomplete body of the donor.

【Influence】The proportion of those seeking psychological counseling has decreased by 12%, and we have successfully encouraged individuals to voluntarily join Family Care Program, becoming advocates for organ donation. This proactive engagement has resulted in a 42% increase in participants within 3 months.

Similar to the Egyptians preserving organs in jars for eternal life, many Taiwanese strongly adhere to the traditional Chinese culture that having a complete body is essential for reaching heaven. The concept of 'body must remain intact' has repeatedly subjected donor’s families to self-criticism.

There's a real story about a wife who agreed to her husband's wish for organ donation and faced disapproval from her mother-in-law and relatives, hearing comments like 'You don't love my son enough!’, 'How could you be so ruthless!', and 'He's missing a heart because of you; now he can't go to heaven!' This caused immense psychological torment for the wife, leading to multiple suicide attempts.

The long-term goal of Taiwan Organ Sharing Registry & Patient Autonomy Promotion Center in executing the 'Organ Donor's Family Care Program' is to alleviate the psychological burden on families in such situations.

Taiwan Organ Sharing Registry & Patient Autonomy Promotion Center, a registered foundation, is the sole official organization in Taiwan responsible for organ donation. In the current process, organ donation requires final approval from family members, often leading to significant psychological trauma, with statistics showing that 56% of family members of organ donors experience mental health issues.

Consequently, the center has been implementing the 'Organ Donor's Family Care Program' for many years. This program includes regular gatherings, music events, hosting support groups, and providing psychological counseling.

However, despite these efforts, the psychological trauma experienced by family members has not been fully addressed, leading many to overlook or unwillingly participate in the program.

Paper Organs aims to break the traditional organ donation taboo of 'body must remain intact' in Taiwan and serves as a comforting gesture for donor's families. Utilizing the traditional funeral custom called 'Joss Paper Burning'. Taiwanese believe that burning paper replicas can provide the same items to loved ones in the afterlife. Therefore, we craft various paper organs using traditional paper artistry, approaching realistic sizes. Hospitals then provide these Paper Organs to living relatives, enabling them to burn Paper Organs for the donors. This process helps alleviate their self-blame regarding the incomplete body of the donor.

We use cultural customs to eliminate the pain caused by cultural customs. Utilizing the tradition of ‘Joss Paper Burning’, we create Paper Organs to break ‘body must remain intact’ taboo. This genuinely soothes the grieving feelings of the donor's family, aiding many relatives who find themselves in profound pain to break free from such thought patterns.

After the launch of Paper Organs, we assisted our client in negotiating collaborations with 11 organ transplant hospitals. We persuaded these hospitals to allocate budgets from their Donor’s Family Care Programs to produce and distribute paper organs to the donor's families. Families of organ donors from these 11 hospitals, regardless of the past or future, can apply for Paper Organs free of charge.

We are currently assisting our client in implementing the Paper Organs program with a total of 42 organ transplant hospitals in Taiwan. Meanwhile, in order to ensure that all families have access to the product, we also collaborated with local funeral item stores to make it available for purchase. Additionally, the product is available on Pinkoi, one of Taiwan's largest e-commerce platforms, further ensuring accessibility for families of organ donors in need.

After introduction of Paper Organs, Taiwan Organ Sharing Registry & Patient Autonomy Promotion Center received numerous messages of gratitude from the families of donors. This project has inspired countless family members of donors to overcome the guilt associated with signing organ donation consent form.

- 332 sets of paper organs were distributed within six months. This includes 42 hearts, 15 lungs, 113 kidneys, 69 livers, and 93 corneas. (Annual number of organ donors in Taiwan in 2023: 416 )

- 56% of family members experienced psychological issues in the past. We decrease the proportion of seeking counseling rate by 12%. 76% found comfort in their grief from interviews.

-Participants in the Family Care Program increased by 42%.

-The annual organ donation consent signing rate increased by 28%, the highest in the past five years, with over 3,400 forms collected.

-Positive discussions about "organ donation" on social media increased by 411%.