Youth Overseas Peace Volunteer Group Honor Taipei Medical University

Vice President Chen Chien-Jen (the middle one) honored the youth overseas peace volunteer groups which won awards. (Photographed by Lin Chi-Cheng)

December 17, 2017, 15:20

Lin Chi-Cheng

Ministry of Education held the “2017 Youth Overseas Peace Volunteer Group Sharing & Presentation Ceremony” today. A total of 60 groups attended the competition and finally 16 out of them won the awards, including “Taipei Medical University’s Feng-Xin Overseas Swaziland Medical Team” and “CYCU CAM with Me-Cambodia 12 Classes”, which won the golden prize and bonus in the amount of NT$100,000 each.

It has been the second year since the Youth Overseas Peace Volunteer Group was founded. Ministry of Education hoped to encourage more young people to walk out of Taiwan to be in line with the world, expand their global view, train their cross-cultural humanistic quality, and explore the world and find their career through the cross-border volunteer service.

Vice President Chen Chien-Jen attended the Ceremony today. In his speech, he mentioned that volunteer service should be a required life course, as students may open the Dokodemo Door for learning at the same time when they are giving. He recalled that he was once a member of NTU Mountain Climbing Club, when the Mountain Climbing Club founded the “NTUKK” together with NTU Bluesound Harmonica Club and NTUNINEWS, and provided tutoring service to the orphanage’s children and led them to take field trips. For him, this experience benefited him a lot in his growth.

“Taipei Medical University’s Feng-Xin Overseas Swaziland Medical Team” won the golden prize this year. The member, Hsiao Tao-Wen, revealed that the medical resources were so poor in Swaziland and most of the people in Swaziland have never seen physicians in their lifetime, let alone the dentist’s clinic service. For example, in Taipei City, every 800 persons required one dentist’s service averagely. However, in Swaziland, one dentist had to serve 60,000 people on averagely. The gap appears to be huge remarkably.

Hsiao Tao-Wen said that they went to Swaziland in winter vacation to provide the dentist’s clinic service primarily, in order to train the service recipients about better dental care concept and amplify the benefit provided by the service group to the local medical level. They also organized the joint volunteer clinic service with Taiwan’s medical team in Swaziland, and after working so hard for 11 days, they have served a total of 1057 persons.

The other group which won the golden prize, “CYCU CAM with Me-Cambodia 12 Classes”, was dedicated to promoting the long-term “Village Seed English Teacher Workshops” plan, in order to train local seed teachers’ knowledge about education and fulfill the program dedicated to getting rid of poverty through education.

CYCU group leader, Chiu Yu-Han, mentioned that teachers were admired and respected by local people in Cambodia, irrelevant with age, ethnic or gender. Though the living conditions were limited and communication of information was underdeveloped, the people of Cambodia still enjoyed their life with pleasure. This inspired them so significantly that they would like to cherish the present.

Source: http://www.chinatimes.com/realtimenews/20171217002048-260405