Sustainable City, Recreate the impact of Yangmei

【The Good Time in Fugang】

Taoyuan is a multi-ethnic city. The current population of new residents in Taoyuan is about 58,000, which is 4th in the country. Not only that, but the Hakka group is also 3rd in Taiwan. It is a city with diverse ethnic groups, cultures, languages, and lifestyles that evolved different customs and styles, interacting with each other, and developing new styles; new resident brides come to Taiwan for deep roots and face many challenges. This plan hopes to lead more students into the community, understand their needs, and play Social influence, and assist new residents in the local women to have innovation and creativity. 

Fugang-Ri, located in Yangmei District, Taoyuan City, left many constructions during the Japanese occupation. At that time, the Japanese ruled Taiwan under the slogan: "Industrial Japan, Agricultural Taiwan" and developed many agricultural-related constructions. In the plan of diversion, the railway originally set up by Liu Mingchuan was moved to Fugang, and a station was opened to transport rice from the large plains of Xinwu Township. Many rice mills and rice silos were set up, and the goods were sent here, turning the station into the rice. The transportation center of goods created the prosperity of the Fugang area and left many historical relics from the Japanese occupation period. After the Japanese army was defeated and evacuated from Taiwan, the government was replaced by the National Government. In the industrial period, the rice industry gradually became desolate and the youth population moved out. The prosperity of the town is not as good as before, leaving behind the romance of history and humanities.

This plan selects Fugang as the base and cooperates with the Taoyuan Xinfu Hakka Cultural Association to jointly rent the old granary from the Yangmei District Farmers’ Association, which is located next to the train station, and activates the space utilization rate by organizing arts and cultural performances. There are college students who are born and raised in Fugang, uphold the Hakka descendants and their sense of mission and responsibility to the local area, bringing the students back, and giving more different perspectives from the local elderly and the community.

In cooperation with local schools and organizations, the project has currently carried out 4 activities, including rice dumplings on May Festival, summer movies, Gonghao Cultural and Creative Market, and Fugang Old Photo Exhibition, attracting more than 1,000 visits to the granary. In the future, in conjunction with the curriculum, more students will be guided to Fugang for resource surveys, to build more local knowledge, and to work harder through cooperation with local organizations to increase the network. Many young people and new residents play a social influence.

【Social Design, Design Your Health】

At the beginning of this year, the National Development Council stated the growth of the population in Taiwan has turned into a negative one, which is 2 years earlier than originally expected. It is estimated that Taiwan will become a super-aged country in 5 years. This reminds us of the importance of preventive health care and health promotion. Taoyuan City's annual population growth is about 40,000 people after the upgrade. Especially, the population exceeded 2.26 million in August this year. In the face of a rapidly growing and aging population, related issues such as health care of the elderly and disease treatment are issues highly valued by the local industries, government, and academics.

To improve the issues of “insufficient physical activity” and “balanced diet” for the elderly over 65, we cooperated with three communities in YangMei District - Ruiyuan, Dadong, and Yuanben for getting fist hand feedback. By using the framework of design thinking, we tried to create innovative prototypes. We expect to solve the pain point of the elderly by tested prototypes so that the elderly can exercise easily without the burden and achieve a balanced diet. Ultimately, we could also test if the prototype is good enough to become the business model for a social enterprise.

At the first workshop, we visited Ruiyuan Community Center. The five steps of design thinking are empathizing, define, ideate, prototype, and testing. After understanding the structure and background of the issues, students and community partners collected information through interviews with local elders and set out to compile the first version of Persona and PoV (Point of View). Later on, we visited the Dadong Community Center to optimize the first version of Persona and PoV. Moreover, students developed HMW (How Might We) to define issues for finding true crucial problems. Not only did they come up with the prototype but also tested it with the elderly on-site at Ruiyuan Community Center.

During these two workshops, the team spurred many creative prototypes, such as products that can detect nutritional intake, games that effectively promote exercise, and equipment that detects activity and muscle strength. The team is currently continuing to test and is expected to propose a specific prototype of product/service in November, and start to implement it in local communities in the coming year.

【The new era of Cyberspace, Social welfare journalists and micro-film is trending!】

In the cyberspace era, all people can become citizen journalists and intervene in many social issues in reporting. As a part of CMSI, our ambassadors can transform from citizen reporters into social impact reporters and use new media to increase their impact. CMSI specially invited Professor Chen, Ya-hui from the Department of Journalism and Broadcasting of Fu Jen Catholic University to establish our ambassadors’ writing and interview's basic skills.

She asked students to brainstorm their opinions on writing. She constantly questions students to think about writing and stimulate students' ability of storytelling. In the class, Professor Chen not only taught everyone how to write the news reports without going against the facts but also taught many practical interview skills, such as ice-breaking skills, non-verbal communication, interview guides, and the way of using 5W1H (Who, What, Why, When, Where, How) to tell stories.

Director Hu, Cai-yuan, who has won the Golden Bell Award many times, was invited as the workshop lecturer. With his 30 years of professional experience in the commercial television industry, Hu mentioned that filming is a time-consuming and laborious job. "After years of working in the industry, I wish to devote my professionalism to society. Hence, I started filming for nonprofit and charitable organizations,” said Director Hu.

In the course, Director Hu asked the students to think about "What is microfilm?" and motives them to visualize the concept of microfilm. He stressed that the prerequisite of making a film or TV program is to understand the film's target audience, and then only the film can be influential.

Director Hu also instructed our ambassadors to make use of mobile phones for video shooting and editing. Besides that, he further emphasized the importance of light sources in the film. He provides many useful tips on using flat white papers, flashlights, toilet paper, and other portable props to manipulate the light source. The students also learned the basic shooting knowledge, such as ISO, shutter, aperture, color temperature, three-point composition, etc. Throughout the courses, the students can combine interview skills and shooting techniques to produce influential social welfare short films and micro-films.