The Overseas Youth English Teaching Volunteer Service Program is hosting 594 foreigners of Taiwanese descent who are to teach at 81 elementary and junior-high schools in 16 counties this summer.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) had instructed that this year’s program — which is to run from Saturday to July 28 — be expanded, after it received favorable responses from overseas compatriot groups, Overseas Community Affairs Council Minister Wu Hsin-hsing (吳新興) said at a news conference yesterday.
The number of volunteers this year increased by nearly a third from about 400 last year, Wu said.
Photo: Lu Yi-hsuan, Taipei Times
The dedication of these volunteers to teaching Taiwanese students is touching, Wu said, adding that the program allows them to “bring the world to Taiwan and Taiwan to their home countries.”
“We want to thank these individuals for their dedication in laying a good foundation for the children of rural Taiwan in learning the English language,” Wu told the volunteers.
Chinese Nationalist Party Legislator Lin Li-chan (林麗蟬) said she was moved by the project.
A descendant of a migrant family, Lin said she was selected as one of the nation’s “Ten Outstanding Young Individuals” for her dedication to social service.
“It was from this distinction that I eventually worked my way into becoming a legislator,” Lin said, adding that the volunteers could one day become lawmakers in their home countries.
“To serve others is an honor; you give some, but you also learn,” Lin said.
Lin said she would like to encourage the volunteers to continue to dedicate themselves to such activities and hopes that similar camps could be set up for Mandarin Chinese and Southeast Asian languages.
The volunteers hail from the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, among other countries. They range in age from 17 to 25, are native English speakers and have a basic command of Mandarin.
The program started in 2004 as an event sponsored by the King Car Cultural & Educational Foundation and the council. With the involvement of the Ministry of Education in 2006, and the Hakka Affairs Council and various other non-governmental organizations in 2014, it has rapidly expanded.
To date, the program has hosted 4,820 people and has benefited more than 4,300 students in 213 schools in rural areas, the Overseas Community Affairs Council said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods