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.
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) today issued a "tsunami watch" alert after a magnitude 8.7 earthquake struck off the Kamchatka Peninsula in northeastern Russia earlier in the morning. The quake struck off the east coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula at 7:25am (Taiwan time) at a depth of about 19km, the CWA said, citing figures from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. The CWA's Seismological Center said preliminary assessments indicate that a tsunami could reach Taiwan's coastal areas by 1:18pm today. The CWA urged residents along the coast to stay alert and take necessary precautions as waves as high as 1m could hit the southeastern
FINAL COUNTDOWN: About 50,000 attended a pro-recall rally yesterday, while the KMT and the TPP plan to rally against the recall votes today Democracy activists, together with arts and education representatives, yesterday organized a motorcade, while thousands gathered on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei in the evening in support of tomorrow’s recall votes. Recall votes for 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers and suspended Hsinchu City mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) are to be held tomorrow, while recall votes for seven other KMT lawmakers are scheduled for Aug. 23. The afternoon motorcade was led by the Spring Breeze Culture and Arts Foundation, the Tyzen Hsiao Foundation and the Friends of Lee Teng-hui Association, and was joined by delegates from the Taiwan Statebuilding Party and the Taiwan Solidarity
Instead of threatening tariffs on Taiwan-made chips, the US should try to reinforce cooperation with Taiwan on semiconductor development to take on challenges from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), a Taiwanese think tank said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose across-the-board import duties of 32 percent on Taiwan-made goods and levy a separate tariff on semiconductors, which Taiwan is hoping to avoid. The Research Institute for Democracy, Society, and Emerging Technology (DSET), a National Science and Technology Council think tank, said that US efforts should focus on containing China’s semiconductor rise rather than impairing Taiwan. “Without
The National Museum of Taiwan Literature is next month to hold an exhibition in Osaka, Japan, showcasing the rich and unique history of Taiwanese folklore and literature. The exhibition, which is to run from Aug. 10 to Aug. 20 at the city’s Central Public Hall, is part of the “We Taiwan” at Expo 2025 series, highlighting Taiwan’s cultural ties with the international community, National Museum of Taiwan Literature director Chen Ying-fang (陳瑩芳) said. Folklore and literature, among Taiwan’s richest cultural heritages, naturally deserve a central place in the global dialogue, Chen said. Taiwan’s folklore would be immediately apparent at the entrance of the
RSS