News

2008.0109

Bloggers Share Their Volunteer Experience in Guatemala to Inspire More Followers

By Sabrina Lin Campus Reporter Three graduate students explored Guatemala through their 10-day trip as volunteers along with Taiwan’s agriculture group and they shared their experience upon the invitation by the Office of International Affairs (OIA) at the International Lounge this noon. "We learned so much and did so much what we may have not done in Taiwan.  You may not have chances to accomplish that if it is not a volunteer program like this,” said Marine Huang (黃琬真), an English major graduate student at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). Huang, along with her classmate Edward Chang (張又仁) and David Kao (高偉豪) were the three students who participated in the volunteer program, held by the Taiwan International Cooperation and Development Fund (Taiwan ICDF).  They all finished their undergraduate study from NTNU’s English Department although Kao is now a Political Science major graduate student at National Taiwan University while Huang and Chang continue their graduate study at NTNU’s English Department. To encourage more Taiwanese students to participate in the oversea volunteer program, Taiwan ICDF organized a group composition contest – “Discover the World Through Bloggin” – to decide the winners, who would have the chances to go through a free training program by Taiwan ICDF and eventually, the free 10-day volunteer trip to Guatemala, where help is needed. Huang, Chang and Kao took part in the contest, became the winners, went through the training program and arrived in Guatemala, where they became additional helping hands for Taiwan’s agriculture representatives who were commissioned to help local people in the farms, in September. The three young graduate students also wrote down their experience in Guatemala and published it – A Blogger’s Adventure with the Taiwan ICDF – after they returned. OIA, meanwhile, said that the Canadian University of British of Columbia (UBC), one of NTNU’s sister universities, has been working on similar oversea volunteer programs for their students for more than a decade and NTNU is also planning to organize similar programs by potential cooperation relationship with UBC. "We would always encourage young students to volunteer and that is why we would invite them (Huang, Chang and Kao) to share with more fellow students on the campus today,” said Dr. Joy Wu (吳靜蘭), a staff member from OIA.