Young volunteers honored for overseas service

2016/12/20

Outstanding volunteers with the Youth Overseas Peace Corps were honored by Vice President Chen Chien-jen at an awards ceremony Dec. 18 in Taipei City for offering vital aid to communities in need around the world.

“Youth Overseas Peace Corps participants have demonstrated their compassion and care for others through their volunteer work, representing Taiwan abroad by making valuable contributions to the international community,” Chen said at the presentation ceremony.

This year the Youth Overseas Peace Corps, organized by the Youth Development Administration under the Ministry of Education, provided funding for 102 teams comprising 1,067 youths from local universities and nonprofit organizations to deliver services in 20 nations. Of these groups, 58 registered to have their projects assessed by a panel of judges, with two selected to earn the top honor, two receiving the second place award and 11 picking up honorable mentions.

Student teams from Taipei Medical University and China Medical University, located in northern and central Taiwan respectively, garnered the highest honor from the YDA.

Participants from Taipei Medical University impressed judges with their efforts to promote a cooking method that eliminates exposure to carcinogenic gases in Republic of China (Taiwan) diplomatic ally Swaziland. Students from China Medical University won recognition for a joint project with a Malaysian team to aid leprosy sufferers and contain the spread of the disease in southwestern China’s Sichuan province.

The MOE has provided funding to enable teams of young people to offer aid abroad for about 10 years, with the program formally titled the Youth Overseas Peace Corps in August 2016. Since the launch of the initiative over a decade ago, more than 1,200 groups comprising 14,000 youths have received subsidies from the MOE and other government agencies, according to Huang Yu-yu, a YDA official responsible for the Peace Corps program.

Source: Taiwan Today (http://taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xItem=250503&ctNode=2194&mp=9)