National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) yesterday announced the launch of Hoping Download, an event for university students from both sides of the Taiwan Strait, including Hong Kong and Macau, to hold activities and provide assistance for elementary and junior-high school students in remote areas in Taiwan and China.
The event involves 340 students at 26 universities, NTNU said, adding that the first stage, which began yesterday, is in Taiwan, while its second leg, to start on July 20, is to be in China.
NTNU president Chang Kuo-en (張國恩) said that while knowledge cannot be amassed over a short period of time, the event is to sow the seeds of hope in schoolchildren in remote areas.
NTNU student Lu Kuan-lin (呂冠霖) said he will go to Penghu’s Magong Junior High School to serve students there.
He said that he was blinded in the ninth grade due to optic neuropathy, so his math teacher prepared everyday tools of various shapes to help him understand basic geometry.
He said he was deeply moved by his former teacher’s patient guidance, prompting him to become a teacher himself someday.
He said he designed a game that asks blindfolded students to smell and name materials such as fruit.
“Blind people, like students in remote areas, are at a disadvantage,” Lu said, adding that games are to remind students how fortunate they are to be physically sound and remind them to show others compassion.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), an alumnus of the university and former legislative speaker, said he hopes the current level of cross-strait exchanges can be boosted through Hoping Download.
“Hopefully, these kinds of events exchanges can continue to warm cross-strait relations,” Wang said.
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