Twenty-four young Taiwanese-Americans yesterday said that a two-week experience teaching English in rural communities has inspired a desire to come back one day and give more to Taiwan.
Tanned and mosquito-bitten, the students spoke about their experiences as participants in the 2004 Overseas Chinese Youth-ABC Schwietzer English Teaching Camp, organized by the King Car Education Foundation and the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission (OCAC).
The camp brought US students of Taiwanese or Chinese heritage to Alishan and Hualien, where they volunteered as English teachers for elementary schoolchildren from Aug. 2-14.
On their return yesterday after the conclusion of the camp, the college students said that their experiences had been eye-opening.
The experience had encouraged her teaching ambitions, said UCLA college sophomore Jennifer Wang (
"I've been thinking about teaching since I began college. These past two weeks showed me how good you can feel, how satisfying it can be to teach kids," Wang said.
For Wang, who had only visited Taiwan once prior to this summer, the experience strengthened her ties to Taiwan.
"I decided to do this because I wanted to get to know Taiwan better. During this camp, I found the people to be very genuine and warmhearted," said Wang.
Eighteen-year-old Diana Chung (
"I joined because the idea of teaching Aboriginal children really appealed to me, and I think that the exposure to English made a world of difference to these kids. Sometimes though, I feel that I got more out of the experience than the kids did," said Chung, adding that the short duration of the camp limited the possible impact the volunteers could make on the children.
For her part, Chung said that the experience had caused her to consider teaching as a career, and said she is thinking about returning to Taiwan to teach English, a sentiment repeated by several others in the group.
"I'm definitely thinking about coming back to Taiwan, possibly to teach English," said Kristi Hsu (
Encouraged by the program's success, the foundation and the OCAC are in the midst of planning more of the camps.
To make a bigger impact on Taiwan's overseas descendants and on the rural communities, the camps will be longer in the future, according to the foundation, possibly lasting an entire summer or up to a year.
"The main purpose of this year's camp was to expose the volunteers to a different side of Taiwanese culture and to help kids in rural areas want to learn English. After all, there's not really much you can learn in just a week," said Jeff Yu (游家富), a coordinator with the foundation.
Longer camps would enable enthusiastic Taiwanese-Americans to give back to Taiwan, as well as make concrete inroads in English education for Taiwan's disadvantaged children, said Yu.
Most of the volunteers at the camp were recruited from the OCAC's annual Overseas Compatriot Youth Summer Formosa Study Tour to Taiwan, better known as the Loveboat.
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