The public Television service in January reported about a group of Indonesians who gather to clean up Taiwan’s countryside, demonstrating their love of the environment.
During weekdays, these Indonesians are students, caregivers or white-collar workers; on weekends, they don green shirts and travel around Taiwan.
This is not simply for the sake of hiking: They go to mountainous areas, public parks and beaches to clean up the garbage there. They belong to a non-profit organization called Universal Volunteer, founded with the aim of making Taiwan a more livable and sustainable country.
Their good work has attracted a lot of media interest.
Universal Volunteer cofounder Mayasari loves mountain-climbing so much that she joined the group Taiwan Hiking Community in her first year of working in Taiwan.
Noticing that the nation’s spectacular mountains and rivers were tarnished with litter, Mayasari in 2016 started bringing Taiwanese and Indonesian friends together on weekends to clean up beaches and mountains.
Last year, she founded Universal Volunteer with a group of friends and the team has since traipsed as far and wide as Yushan (玉山), Hehuanshan (合歡山) and New Taipei City’s Sandiaoling Waterfall Hiking Trail (三貂嶺瀑布群).
You could say that Mayasari and her fellow Indonesian volunteers demonstrate a love for Taiwan stronger than that of some Taiwanese. After all, a lot of the garbage they have collected was dumped by Taiwanese lacking a basic sense of civic responsibility.
The team once spent four weekends cleaning up the coastal hiking trail in New Taipei City’s Cape Fuguijiao (富貴角).
Mayasari has said she hopes people learn to take their garbage with them, because a small effort would help improve the environment.
The people in Universal Volunteer do not limit their work to cleaning up mountains: The organization has also launched blood donation campaigns and is devoted to helping the underprivileged.
It hopes to expand the charitable deeds, such as offering free haircuts to the homeless, supporting orphans and providing assistance to people living in poverty-stricken areas.
These Indonesian volunteers are exemplary people. Living in a foreign nation with lower income and long working hours, they still manage to turn the virtue of benevolence and the love of environmental protection into positive action.
They are a model for Taiwanese and deserve applause.
Teng Hon-yuan is an associate professor at Chinese Culture University.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
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