Chen Chien Jen, the Vice President, attended the “108th Overseas Youth Peace Corps and Exposition” to affirm young people upholding the simplest concepts of service work together to overcome language barriers and cultural differences, and they showed the strongest solidarity to contribute to changing the world. It was also encouraged that Taiwanese young people could join the overseas volunteers to concretise their ideals and expertise into actions of caring for the international community, let everyone see Taiwanese young people’s spirit of altruism and dedication, and bring themselves and Taiwan more friendships.
The Vice President mentioned that the first-ever team, the award-winning “Desperate Courage” of Fooyin University, sent three students who had nursing backgrounds to Indonesia to provide medical services. The team held health education lectures in the community to advocate anti-infection measures, as well as the correct diet and concepts of no smoking. Through the actual model operation guidance of CPR and their medical expertise, the residents were assisted in disease prevention to promote good lifestyles and health.
The Vice President further explained that his juniors from the vector-borne disease’s lab of the Department of Public Health of the National Taiwan University, was one of the award-winning teams this year. Apart from using the knowledge of public health, the team also cooperated with “Step 30” to evaluate the results of health education provided by “Step 30” for local people and proposed improvement methods to bring them a good awareness of prevention based on the evaluation results. It was highly appreciated that they maintained the health and cleanliness of homes and individuals, improved the environmental situations, reduced the prevalence of infectious diseases, improved the lives of residents, and set a model of cooperation between academic units and civil societies.
The Vice President stated that apart from the subsidy of the Ministry of Education, 301 youth teams totalizing 3,690 people that are formed by high schools or universities have provided overseas services. Among them, nearly 80% of all have gone to New Southbound countries to promote and lay a good foundation for the government to promote the “New Southbound Policy”.
