Next month, the conservation non-profit Taiwan Environmental Information Association (TEIA, 台灣環境資訊協會) test-runs a new itinerary in its series of “eco” working holidays: three Amis Aboriginal villages over five days and four nights.
It’s a “voluntour,” a tour combined with volunteering opportunities that will include clearing coastlines and pulling weeds.
THE REAL THING
Photo courtesy of TEIA
Participants won’t find many residents greeting them in ritual Aboriginal dress. Nor will they be bused around for photo shoots at scenic locations.
Instead, life in a Taitung Aboriginal village will look, more or less, the way it does on an uneventful day for the typical resident. The Pacific Ocean will be bright blue with a light sprinkle of debris. At nightfall, the tide falls out and the visitors go pick mollusks from the rocks with the villagers.
The three Amis villages of Pisilian, Fudafudak and Atolan will appear moderately healthy — which they are, said TEIA project manager Hsu Hui-ting (許惠婷), “because more youth are coming back.”
Photo courtesy of TEIA
But the villages do face grave problems.
“This time we’re going to more than one village. It’s the first time we’ve tried this. We want people to see the villages as a whole, because they are encountering quite similar issues,” Hsu said.
Problems include about a dozen construction projects — such as the Miramar resort — that are creating a visible ecological impact.
Mainstream tourism, a booming industry, also has negative effects. Each summer buses pour into Sansiantai (三仙台), a 10km stretch of white beach near Pisilian.
“Buses and people go in and sometimes they leave a good deal of trash. The profit is going somewhere but it’s not always to the locals. Some people say the tourism helps — they go set up a stand and sell sausages — but the [Amis] tribes are not so sure,” Hsu said.
THE BETTER VOLUNTOUR
TEIA promotes its eco working holiday model of tourism in Taitung County, Greater Tainan, on Yangming Mountain and on the outlying island of Penghu, hoping that it will become a long-lasting engine of growth for target communities and their ecosystems.
The eco working holiday is not the kind of working holiday thousands of Taiwanese students take overseas every year, as participants here pay their way and make no money on the job. It’s a voluntour, a relatively recent form of touring.
Globally, the voluntour sector is growing rapidly, but it remains somewhat controversial because it remains unclear how much benefit disadvantaged communities truly gain from the labor of short-term volunteers.
Since the first itinerary in 2004, TEIA has strived to fine-tune a voluntour model that will create meaningful results.
“We don’t want to bring in people for the sake of bringing them in. Our goal is to be a long-term solution for the region,” said Hsu, who coordinates tours on the east coast.
“We have worked with these villages for a while now and what we do is ask them for something they really need that short-term volunteers can do,” she added.
TEIA also designs the tours with an eye on creating local work opportunities.
“It’s a trip that you pay for with proceeds to go to the community,” she said.
“The money goes into things like accommodation — sometimes we stay in people’s homes. In August, we’re staying in homestays within the villages,” she said.
TEIA also commissions classes: Last year, elders at Pisilian were hired to teach volunteers to build a hut for a composting toilet. Next month, residents will teach visitors to make cloth out of bark and sew them into handbags.
“We make meal arrangements directly with them, which this time means asking the women in the village to prepare our food,” Hsu said.
Ultimately, the communities themselves can take over the tour’s operation. In Greater Tainan’s Chiku (七股), voluntours have shifted smoothly from TEIA to local residents, Hsu said.
Established in 2001, TEIA is a Taipei-based non-profit NGO for wildlife conservation that disseminates news and research about the environment.
The August Eco Working Holiday is NT$6,800 per person, which includes all fees except transportation to Taitung County. Tours are in Mandarin Chinese, with interpretation available from Mandarin Chinese to English. To participate, register by Wednesday at www.e-info.org.tw/en/about.
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