Work Hard for Diplomacy by Service and Spread Love in “El Salvador” With Technology
El Salvador, a small country in Central America, is a permanent diplomatically of Taiwan. CYCU overseas volunteer group has headed for Salvador to engage in IT education, cultural exchange and sharing of supplies in rural areas for two years consecutively. The CYCU folks walked out of their comfort zone to contribute their passion, and cherished what they own for the time being, found a new brand self and recorded their youth and passion.
We always complain about what we don’t have, but forget to cherish what we do have.
Each year, there will be some CYCU student groups always willing to contribute themselves and train their ability by forming overseas volunteer groups engaged in contribution in foreign countries. When the CYCU overseas volunteer group visited Salvador for the first time in 2015, the group became the first professional service group from Taiwan’s colleges/universities which entered Salvador in Central and South America, by the aid from the NGO “Care to Help Foundation” founded by Weng Yen-Tien, an alumnus of CYCU Department of Applied Mathematics, and the R.O.C. Embassy in El Salvador.
Chen Hsuan-Hui, who was studying in CYCU Department of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language then, shared her experience, saying that “We taught the children suffering from domestic violence, abuse, abandonment and unmarried pregnancy about application of IT information in “ISNA”; some of these miserable girls were only 15 or 16 years old and even younger than me!”
“I hope that our contribution could make them have different thoughts for their future life and familiar with IT and learn the skill to help their employment.”, said by her. She also said “We were met by the First Lady of El Salvador and Vice President couple at that time, and we were so honored as we felt like we were truly driving diplomacy for Taiwan.”.
Salvador 2 Classes Go, Continue Senior’s Charity
In 2016, the “Communication of Love in Salvador Overseas Service-Learning Plan” has been initiated for two years consecutively. The four students known as “Salvador 2 Classes” came from College of Business, College of Engineering and College of Humanities and Education. All the group members have passed the interview and selection by CYCU Service-Learning Center, and then did what they were good at to continue the senior’s charity.
At the beginning of summer vacation, the four students of Salvador 2 Classes, including Lin Yung-Chih and Shih Yu of Department of Civil Engineering, Lin Li-Chen of Department of International Business, and Hsieh Ju-Fen of Department of Applied Linguistics and Language Studies initiated the service activity for 33 days. They taught the disadvantaged children to use computer in Salvador, in hopes of spreading live and reversing the children’s life with the power of technology, and also strengthened the in-depth knowledge and inspired the learning of university students and juveniles of both countries through the cultural exchange activities.
Intensive Training for Learning by Doing and Doing by Learning
In order to be competent as volunteers, the participating students have already prepared for it within 8 months before departure. The leader, Lin Yung-Chih, revealed that “Salvador 2 Classes have already been busy in working since 2015, as it not only raised charity supplies from CYCU teachers and students but also attended a series of courses dedicated to training, including building the whole group’s overseas Service-Learning attitude, learning how to edit and produce films, designing IT teaching plans and exercising practices; because Spanish was the official local language in Salvador, we had to learn such language which we never contacted before, at least simple conversation and greetings!”
Recalling the process from zero to one, Lin Li-Chen said with smile that “we learned what we were not familiar with in the training courses, including planning of adequate IT teaching plans, learning of the ability of presentation, and sense of identity and communication among the group members. The members learned the meaning of “learning by doing and doing by learning” in such cycles as inspection, feedback and modification.”
The four group members performed their own functions. In detail, Lin Yung-Chih acted as the leader and public relations. Lin Li-Chen was responsible for compilation of information, general affairs and management of facilities. Shih Yu acted as the artistic designer directing the design of teaching tools and artistic promotional materials and designing teaching plans. Hsieh Ju-Fen acted as the teacher responsible for consolidating the contents of teaching plans, in consideration of what she learned from Department of Applied Linguistics and Language Studies and her experience in teaching.
33-Day Volunteer Service Life Full of Non-stop Fun and Moving
The 33-day service process consisted of IT education and service, cultural exchange, and allocation of supplies in local rural areas. The local university students jointed the IT education and service to form the multi-national cooperation! First of all, CYCU students taught the lesson in English, and the local university students acted as the simultaneous interpreters to translate the English into Spanish immediately. The group also integrated massive body languages into the teaching to bridge the gap caused by different languages.
Lin Li-Chen was very impressed about some problem arising in the first class of IT education. Because the students responsible for translation were late, they had to teach the lesson with body language for a while! She said, “When we could not communicate with each other with the same language, we still could bridge the gap between both of us with smile and active interaction. Some of the children were shy and indifferent at the beginning of the class, but after they played some interesting games in the class, they raised hands actively in order to answer questions and enjoyed themselves very much. This should be the remarkable achievement we received in the process of service.”
What impressed Shih Yu is the story taking place in the first week too. He said, “A trainee felt frustrated and stopped practicing typing, because his typing speed was slow. He also acted so immature to ignore our caring; therefore, I decided to practice the typing and complete the mission together with him, and finally we completed the learning on the same day.” At the end of the class, this little boy came to him to thank him, told him that “No one cares me usually and I am so touched that you are willing to spend time staying with me!” The boy’s words impressed and touched Shih Yu very much and, therefore, made his determination to continue contribution firm more and more!
Learn to Strengthen Ability by Contribution, Cherish Resources of Happiness
In the process of IT education, a lot of young girls who were pregnant attended the class. This made the group members feel shocked and distressed! Lin Yung-Chih recalled, “We asked these young single mothers to write down their dream, but most of them could not!”.
Lin Li-Chen said, “One girl wrote down her dream finally, but she unbelievably said she dreamed to be a worker at factory; this shocked me greatly! The pressure in real life deprived their ability to dream; at the same time when we feel sorry for them, I also realized how happy and lucky I am. Therefore, I should cherish the resources around me more and also think from other points of view to be more open-minded and wiser.”
With the efforts by Salvador 2 Classes, these children and juveniles learned how to use such basic IT software as Word and PowerPoint and produce their own resume and autograph independently. In order to put the teaching activity to a perfect ending, the group led all trainees to produce the “sky lantern” at the presentation of results to guide these girls to write down their dream.
“I hope that they may find a good job with the skills learned by them from the IT courses; I also expect that they may think of this moving movement whenever seeing the sky lantern, and act with energy to move forward toward their dream always!” Hsieh Ju-Fen looks forward to the girls’ bright future.
Work Hard to Learn, Transform and Grow
Salvador 2 Classes followed the footprint of the “Care to Help Foundation”, and directed from the asphalt road in the Capital of Salvador to the muddy and stony roads in 7 rural areas of Salvador to allocate supplies to grandfathers and grandmothers in these rural areas personally. When seeing these old folks smiling when accepting the supplies, we felt warm in our mind.
Lin Yung-Chih said emotionally, “Before long, we forgot what contentment was when living in a rich environment; from them, we found back what we were and learned about contentment, treasuring and gratitude.”
During the 33-day service life, Salvador 2 Classes experienced a lot of the “first-time” in their life, e.g. seeing that the old grandmothers in the rural areas didn’t have time to cook dinner until carrying heavy wood on their heads back to home, and that the young single mothers no longer made day dreaming and transformed their dream to “bread” in real life. All of the impacts and heartaches were transformed to their efforts in continuing the contribution and service, and also changed many of the ideas which they took it for granted in the past and their past lifestyle pursuing materialism.
“It would be tough inevitably in the process of learning, transformation and growth; I can only control the resources I own for the time being and do more to feed back the society. I believe that many a little makes a mickle, and all worth it even if we are only able to change a child’s dream for the future!” Lin Li-Chen firmed her belief in helping people more and more.
With the continued passion they spent locally, after returning back to Taiwan, El Salvador 2 Classes worked harder to help El Salvador and participated in various volunteer contests and sharing the experience in volunteer service constantly, and speech, radio shows and bazaars in hopes of accumulating more results, spreading love more widely, feeding the results back to El Salvador and planting the seeds of volunteer service again.
“As we were so moved and inspired when hearing the senior’s brave stories, we hope that we can play the role of gardener engaged in spreading love and call on more students to walk out of their comfort zone to change themselves and then the world!”
Source: http://www.cw.com.tw/article/article.action?id=5081097
