MAKE A NEW FACE FOR KUN SHAN VILLAGE

Kunshan Workcamp, the very first international workcamp will held in this year by VYA Taiwan, Kunnan Community Development Association and Kun Shan Elementary School. This wrokcamp is aim to make friends with close interactivity, achieve international understanding and improve children¡¯s English capacity and broaden children¡¯s global understanding and build the friendship with foreigners. We will conduct a five-day summer camp in Kun Shan Elementary School. In those day, we will arrange some courses, such as playing games teaching English, make some traditional handicraft, or some cooking course and so on. After two-day¡¯s break, we¡¯ll join another five days to repair/arrange a deserted house into a multipurpose room, used for child¡¯s game room, meeting room, teahouse for elder people etc., with local residents and volunteers. Participants will also have opportunities to experience traditional local market, night market, and a local tourism in flexible schedule, and to chat with the local people and enjoy their passions. Kunshan community, located in the countryside of Taichung City, is a small serene village in the middle of Taiwan. Because of the Dajia river, the weather condition is suitable for producing many high quality agricultural productions. Where is rich in flowers, fruits and vegetables all year round such as orchid, mushroom, grape, orange, etc. For vegetable and fruit lovers, this place is definitely a heaven. However, the population structure becomes unstable M shape due to the industry transformation. Young people has less interest in farming than looking opportunity in downtown, that¡¯s deepens rural-urban gap and reduces development energy of Kunshan community. Because of the scarcity and unequal distributions of resource, a large number of local residents are at the poor social and economic status for a long time, children are lacking of English learning resource as well. Besides, Local residents want to understand their own culture and social values further. In order to tackle these problems, through this camp held in Kunshan, we wish to promote global understanding, trigger students¡¯ learning interests and enhance their capacity of English through in-depth interactions between local residents and cross-national youths. Empowering the young generation to think globally, act locally, we introduce Kunshan to the world with a brand new perspective strongly. Aims: 1) To add new tourism attractions in Kunshan village through global and local voluntary power 2) To promote friendship/understanding/solidarity among local people and cross-national volunteers 3) To ground a firm foundation and extend development of international workcamps all over Taiwan 4) To enrich and improve the variety of learning resource and environment for teenagers. Works: W1: We will teach English and play with children in Kun Shan Elementary School, W2: We work together with local youth and woodwork master to clean, repair roof and doo