The Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) 2017 Overseas Youth English Teaching Volunteer Service Program in Taiwan has begun. 434 overseas youth have come to Taiwan to teach English at 63 elementary and middle schools in remote areas. The opening ceremony hosted by OCAC Deputy Minister Tien Chiu-Chin was held at Chientan Youth Activity Center on July 3.

In her speech, Tian said that this program received more than 900 applications. The 434 approved candidates have come to Taiwan to teach English at elementary and middle schools in areas that are in remote ones or which lack teaching resources during summer vacation. On behalf of OCAC Minister Wu Hsin-Hsing, she thanked everyone for their enthusiastic participation and expressed the hope that the participants learn a lot from their experience and appreciate the true meaning of “Giving is better than receiving.”

Tian also said she hopes that the participants will share their experience of living overseas with the children they encounter in Taiwan, bringing the world to Taiwan; also, when they return home, she hopes they will share what they have seen and heard in Taiwan with their schoolmates and friends, introducing their homeland Taiwan and taking Taiwan out into the world because “Taiwan is worth the world’s attention.”

Representative of participants Kan Jacquelyn thanked the OCAC for giving them a chance to payback society and for bringing so many youth volunteers from around the world to serve children in remote areas of Taiwan, and also giving participants who have grown up overseas an opportunity to see the beauty and cultural diversity of their homeland Taiwan for themselves.

The Overseas Youth English Teaching Volunteer Service Program in Taiwan will run from July 1 to 29. The 434 volunteers are young compatriots from the US, Canada, UK, New Zealand and South Africa etc. They will be dispatched to 63 remote elementary and middle schools in 16 cities/counties to serve as volunteer English teachers. Up to 2016, the Program has had 3793 volunteer participants who have benefited more than 27,000 children in remote areas.