Taiwan Dream Project - The Project That Provides Educational and Nutritional Services for Children in Remote Communities
CTBC Financial Holding Co., Ltd.
“Since the implementation of “Taiwan Dream” for 18 months, more than NTD 56,656,614 has been invested. A total of 628 school children have participated this project, of which over 80% are underprivileged children.”
INTRODUCTION
CTBC Bank has long supported the CTBC Charity Foundation in holding the “Light up a life” fundraising campaign. In order to continue the focus of education and living environment of the underprivileged children, CTBC Charity Foundation has cooperated with the Ministry of Health and Welfare and experts from practical and academic areas to launch the “Taiwan Dream” project across the country since 2015. Eighteen empowered community development associations are combined to provide school children with multiple afterschool activities and meals. CTBC has been investing a lot of resources into the social welfare organizations, and helped many underprivileged children in need. However, many problems remain unsolved. Therefore, CTBC decided to combine local organizations to provide a type of service which can respond to local children’s real demands. The goal of this project is to ensure children having proper meals and educational resources, and provide resident-volunteer training in order to raise awareness of taking care of underprivileged children in the community.
FRAMEWORK AND STRATEGY
Given that the partnership with local associations, the role of local governments in supporting these associations is important because they know local situation and resources well; overall planning consultation and local governments’ coordination need to be assisted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, combined with group of experts from Taiwan Care Management Association to help them accumulate related knowledge and ability. In this case, it can be seen as the first comprehensive enterprise-academic-government alliance to promote child care services.The core value of this project is to emphasize that “children in the community are our children”. Thus, the implementation and planning of this project are not score-oriented; it actually focuses on the local power from local volunteers who engaged in the care and companions of underprivileged children. Through the following empowerment process, the foundation facilitates associations to accumulate their energy and leave important abilities in the community, which will help with its future sustainable development. The curricula aim to build self-confidence, self-discipline and imagination, in the meanwhile, children will feel much solicitude during companionship without the risk of lacking parental care. This project encourages incorporating locality into the curriculum planning which is helpful to improve children’s recognition of community and their willingness to contribute to the community.
ACHIEVEMENT AND IMPACT
Since the implementation of “Taiwan Dream” for 18 months, more than NTD 56,656,614 has been invested. A total of 628 school children have participated this project, of which over 80% are underprivileged children. More than 6,219 courses or activities have held in attempt to provide children better companionship. On the one hand, since the project values local people’ participations, the foundation called on 635 volunteers to join the services of the 18 bases, and invested more than 18,657 hours. Furthermore, each community that experienced empowerment learned to explore local resources. Currently, each community links more than 225 public and private sectors in total, and the total amount of subsidies is up to NTD 10,669,180. After “Taiwan Dream” entered communities, significant changes had been seen on children and residents. Originally, many children have underweight problems; however, since the implementation of the project, school children’s BMI has improved. From psychological aspect, these children’s depression values have decreased with increased sense of happiness and safety. In terms of the residents, they are more willing to serve as volunteers to take care of children. Moreover, these residents’ knowledge in taking care of children increased, and they will also have much more awareness towards their communities. All of the above will prevent children from abuse.FUTURE DIRECTION
The project will continue to work on the issues of sustainable development. It will emphasize upon two aspects, which are, first of all, improving community’s ability will help reduce their dependence on resources, and secondly, increased recognition of the project will enhance investments from other resources. The follow-up will be the expansion of this project by adding two bases in July 2017, raising the visibility of the bases in order to accumulate communities’ sustaining ability and helping them to transform into demonstration bases to call on more people for this project.
Established in 1966, CTBC Bank Co., Ltd. is one of the main subsidiaries of CTBC Financial Holding Co., Ltd., launched “Light up a life” charity campaign in 1985 which is the first charity event held specifically for underprivileged children in Taiwan. For the past three decades, we have been working to assist underprivileged children and families while also actively establishing a corporate culture of volunteerism to truly live up to our brand spirit, “We are family”. CTBC Bank has cooperated with CTBC Charity Foundation since 2004 to extend CTBC’s investments in social welfare.
