Young ambassadors abroad

Taiwanese youths apply for working holiday visas at Japan’s representative office in Taipei on the day that a working holiday agreement between the two countries took effect in June 2009. (Photo by Central News Agency)

With government assistance, Taiwanese youths are learning about the world and helping the world learn about their homeland.

Japan has long held a special fascination for Lin Yu-hsuan (林育萱), a 30-year-old woman from Taipei. Prior to 2009, she had visited the country many times, but eventually found herself chafing under restrictions that bar tourists from taking paid jobs or staying longer than three months. Student visas were also out of the question. “I’d wanted to live and study in Japan for a long time, but I couldn’t afford the tuition,” she says.

Lin’s hopes of gaining a more in-depth experience of Japan received a major boost in April 2009, when Taipei and Tokyo signed an agreement permitting working holidays of up to 12 months for youths from 18 to 30 years old. “It was a godsend,” she says. “I was approaching 30. How could I miss out on such a great opportunity?”

Lin took the plunge and departed for a one-year working holiday in Japan in November 2009. By having the privilege of working to support herself during her stay there, Lin gained some of the most valuable experiences of her life. “I’d never thought I could work abroad someday—and without using my native language,” she says of speaking Japanese at her job as a salesclerk in Tokyo, where she spent most of her working holiday. “Exploring abroad motivated me to push my limits and learn more about myself.” Staying longer in Japan also helped her mix more with local people and allowed her to gain a deeper understanding of the country, she says.

The Republic of China (ROC) government promotes youth travel abroad through negotiating working holiday agreements, supporting the nation’s young people who undertake internships in international nonprofit organizations (NPO), helping them participate in international aid projects and sending them overseas to represent Taiwan as part of the country’s International Youth Ambassadors Program. ROC President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) believes that such programs provide multiple benefits. “We should interact with people from different countries and cultures in the early stage of our lives, in order to learn about the significance of mutual respect, tolerance and appreciation. Youth exchanges are a very important step in humanity’s effort to seek world peace,” he said at an event in September 2010 that featured young people sharing their experiences of participating in the International Youth Ambassadors Program. “I hope that youth will spread Taiwan’s soft power throughout the world, enabling the people of the world to sense the warmth and enthusiasm of Taiwan and to understand the nation’s determined pursuit of freedom, democracy and peace,” he said.

Lin is just one of many young people from Taiwan who have benefited from the government’s efforts to connect the country’s youths to the world through working holiday agreements. In 2004, such pacts with New Zealand and Australia took effect, and the 2009 agreement that enabled Lin to work in Japan has since been followed by similar arrangements with Canada, Germany, South Korea and the United Kingdom, in that order. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), as of September 2011 nearly 47,000 Taiwanese people from 18 to 30 years old (18 to 35 in the case of Canada) had explored the world by using working holiday visas since the Australian and New Zealand agreements were signed.

Participants in the 2011 International Youth Ambassadors Program demonstrate what they learned about the cultures of Palau at a post-trip exhibition in Taipei in September 2011. (Photo Courtesy of National Taiwan Normal University)

As of the end of September 2011, Australia had proven to be the most popular destination in the scheme, attracting more than 36,000 Taiwanese working holidaymakers since 2004. There is no upper limit on how many Taiwanese youths are able to visit Australia via the working holiday channel each year, whereas annual quotas for other countries range from Germany’s 200 slots to Japan’s 2,000.

Taiwan’s newest working holiday agreement—that with the United Kingdom—took effect on January 1 this year. Officially known as the Youth Mobility Scheme, the pact is a bit unusual because it permits Taiwanese youths to extend their UK working holiday for up to two years, whereas they can stay for a maximum of one year in the other six countries with which Taiwan has agreements. MOFA is negotiating working holiday agreements with several other countries.

“The willingness of those developed countries to sign the agreements with Taiwan reflects their recognition of the high quality of our citizens,” says Jack Yun-jie Lee (李允傑), minister of the National Youth Commission (NYC). Lee notes that such countries do not sign working holiday pacts indiscriminately, adding that the pact with Taiwan is just the sixth inked by the United Kingdom.

The NYC plays a role in the working holiday plan by offering each participant a low-interest loan of up to NT$120,000 (US$4,000). Applicants concerned about the difficulty of finding a job during their first few months overseas can apply for the loan before they depart, Lee says.

The commission also encourages Taiwanese youths to explore and learn about the world by providing information and funding for internships abroad. Since 2008, the internship program has provided grants to Taiwanese people between the ages 18 and 30 to travel overseas and spend at least 30 days working as interns for NPOs and enterprises. As of November 2011, a total of 191 youths had performed such internships, with the great majority working for NPOs accredited by governments of the host countries in fields such as medicine and social work.

“Working as an intern was the purpose of my trip, but I was also quite serious about gaining a deeper understanding of how other people live,” says Hsieh Yi-geng (謝易耿), a library science major. Hsieh served a two-and-a-half-month internship in the summer of 2010 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to help establish the school library’s Asian digital archive. “Only after leaving Taiwan did I find out that the world is so vast and so different,” Hsieh says.

Volunteers from National Chiayi University demonstrate farming techniques in a rural area near Jakarta. (Photo Courtesy of Hsieh Hsiang-chun)

In addition to going on working holidays and performing internships with NPOs, Taiwanese youths venture overseas to participate in service and aid programs. As of November 2011, 6,229 young Taiwanese had received financial aid from the NYC for volunteer work performed abroad.

Hsieh Hsiang-chun (謝香君), who graduated from National Chiayi University (NCYU) in Chiayi City, southern Taiwan in 2011, for example, opted to join a service program in Indonesia when she was a student at NCYU. In 2009 and again in 2010, the agronomy major traveled to a rural area near Jakarta with her schoolmates for two-week visits to perform volunteer work that included teaching locals to grow crops. “From my experience of helping people there, I learned about the need to value and make the best use of all the resources we have,” she says.

The NYC helps underwrite such trips by providing grants of up to NT$150,000 (US$5,000) per volunteer group. The government agency also recognized the NCYU group’s achievements in Indonesia by presenting it with the top award in contests held in 2009 and 2010 to honor the teams of young volunteers.

A notable part of the NYC volunteer program targets teaching in schools attended by the children of Taiwanese families living abroad. In this effort to assist overseas Taiwanese in areas such as Mandarin learning, which is considered the most important part of the program, the NYC often works with the Cabinet-level Overseas Compatriot Affairs Commission, with the latter assessing the schools’ needs and the NYC recruiting young volunteers in Taiwan. So far, 93 teams of volunteers—a total of 344 young people—have taught in the program.

Encouraging Interaction

The newest effort to broaden the horizons of young Taiwanese is the International Youth Ambassadors Program sponsored by MOFA. The initiative began in 2009 and is designed to encourage college students to interact with the international community by financing and organizing short-term trips for teams of students during the summer holidays. Each team is composed of six students led by a teacher from their school. In addition to visiting government officials and agencies in the countries they visit, the informal ambassadors arrange classes in which they engage in cultural exchanges with local youths. “They’re cultural ambassadors, part of Taiwan’s effort to exert its soft power abroad,” says Samuel Chen (陳士良), who until late 2011 served as director-general of MOFA’s Department of African Affairs, which was responsible for the program in 2011. MOFA’s Department of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs has taken on the responsibility of overseeing this year’s project.

Each team must also draft a well-organized plan for their journey, and members must attend three classes taught by professional diplomats from MOFA and the leaders of previous groups that have traveled abroad. When they return, the young ambassadors must participate in a post-trip exhibition to introduce what they have learned about building bridges between Taiwan and the world. The most recent exhibition was held at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) in September 2011.

Loca Lin, left, strikes a surfing pose with Australian friends. The money Lin earned during his working holiday in Australia enabled him to roam the world for a year. (Photo Courtesy of Loca Lin)

The teams usually face a rigorous and competitive screening process in order to win the chance to serve overseas. Originally, the program sent students to the six island nations in the Pacific with which the ROC has formal diplomatic relations. It proved so popular among students, however, that in 2010 the program was expanded to cover all of the ROC’s formal allies except for Haiti and the Vatican. In 2011, the program was expanded yet again to include 12 countries that do not have formal ties with Taiwan. In total, the 2011 program sent 37 teams to countries ranging from Peru to South Africa to the United States, which was visited by five teams.

“I’d traveled abroad on my own for pleasure and for short-term English-learning courses. But the International Youth Ambassadors Program is unique,” says Wendy Lin (林心如), a senior majoring in adult and continuing education at NTNU in Taipei. In July 2011, she departed on a two-week trip to serve as a young ambassador in Cape Town, South Africa. The most valuable thing about the trip was the opportunity it gave her to communicate with local people, Wendy Lin says. “In each class, I usually spoke with around 30 local youths. We talked about our countries in English, which was a totally new experience for me.”

The trip to South Africa had such an impact on Wendy Lin that it may end up shaping her choice of career. “I’ve developed an interest in diplomacy,” says the student, who went on to participate in a three-day camp held by MOFA in Taipei in December 2011 to cultivate young diplomatic talent.

In the future, Jack Yun-jie Lee of the NYC believes there will be many more opportunities for Taiwanese youths to connect with the world, as there has been a sharp increase in the number of countries and territories granting visa-free entry to Taiwanese citizens in recent years. The number stood at 54 in May 2008, but had increased to 124 by December 2011, leading to a more favorable atmosphere for youth travel, Lee says.

Making Youth Travel Easier

For now, the NYC is working on memorandums of understanding (MOU) with youth affairs officials in other countries. In December 2010, the commission inked such an MOU with Israel, the first of its kind for Taiwan. The document specifically encourages youth affairs officials from Taiwan and Israel to exchange visits with the aim of making travel between the two easier for young people. As a result, Israeli youth affairs officials made a trip to Taiwan in June 2011 and their Taiwanese counterparts are expected to make a return visit this year.

As more and more of Taiwan’s energetic, enterprising young people travel abroad, they boost their understanding of the world—and the world’s understanding of their homeland—simply by interacting with people along the way. Loca Lin (林煌彬), for example, currently works as a licensed tour guide, but in November 2006, he was a 23-year-old computer science graduate headed for Australia on a working holiday. Once there, his initial goal of immersing himself in an English-speaking environment to improve his competence in the language turned into a desire to explore the world. With the money he earned in Australia, he went on to spend one year roaming from the Arctic to the Sahara to the Amazon rainforest. “It was an amazing journey,” he says. “I felt the pure happiness of sincere sharing.” By sharing in such a manner, young people like Loca Lin also spread a strong, positive message about Taiwan.

Write to Oscar Chung at oscar@mail.gio.gov.tw