For Southeast Asian workers, free business-management classes, help with everyday life and monthly social events to mingle with young Taiwanese are among the services provided by the One-Forty Foundation.
Created by Chen Kai-hsiang (陳凱翔) and Wu Chih-ning (吳致寧), two business management professionals in their late 20s, the One-Forty Foundation was organized to cater to guest workers’ needs for education beyond basic language ability and cultural awareness.
Chen said that after he graduated from National Chengchi University’s business school, he began working in a consultant company, while volunteering to teach Chinese for the Taiwan International Workers’ Association.
Photo: Yeh Kuan-yu, Taipei Times
He discovered that migrants have needs in addition to the language and cultural classes offered by most outreach programs, so he created the One-Forty Foundation with his friend, Wu.
The foundation’s name refers to one person in every 40 in Taiwan being a Southeast Asian guest worker, with a total of about 600,000 in the nation, Chen said.
The “guest workers’ business school” created by the foundation in July last year is an example of a unique social service that it provides for migrants, he added.
It provides migrants with free education in finance, management and marketing, and the classes are tailored for migrants who plan to open a small business when they return home with money they have earned in Taiwan, which is a common aspiration of guest workers, Chen said.
Classes are taught during weekends and holidays, with eight courses taught over a three-month period, and the foundation this year began uploading lectures online to make materials available to foreign workers who are unable to attend classes during holidays.
To help migrants who are not fluent in both English and Chinese, the foundation organizes teams of guest workers to translate instructions displayed by railway ticket vending machines into their native language and distribute the translations to other expats, which serves as language-skills practice and is a confidence-building exercise for the participants, Chen said.
The foundation also holds monthly outreach events, including picnics in public venues, such as Daan Forest Park (大安森林公園), the 228 Memorial Park or Taipei Railway Station — called “Southeast Asian Sundays” — which are attended by guest workers and young Taiwanese.
Lina, from Indonesia, said that prior to attending Southeast Asian Sunday events, she often felt young Taiwanese she met in Taipei were unfriendly toward her.
Another Indonesian expat, Yusni, who has been working in Taiwan for six years, said that the social events allowed her to make friends with young Taiwanese outside the Indonesian guest workers’ social circle, and that she now has Taiwanese friends to dine and travel with.
One foreign worker said the foundation previously invited internationally renowned artists Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan and Alfredo Juan Aquilizan, a husband-and-wife team, to help guest workers get involved with artistic projects.
Chen said that the focus of the outreach program is to encourage interaction between Taiwanese and guest workers.
“Taiwanese are paying closer attention to guest workers, but people still tend to see them as a minority group that needs help. In reality, they are just like us,” Chen added.
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