CyberFair Project ID: 8523

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International Schools CyberFair Project Narrative
Title: Aligning Immigrant Laborers, Endeavoring Absolute Justice
Category: 2. Community Groups and Special Populations
URL: http://www.kcbs.ntpc.edu.tw/2020cyberfair/SH/AIL_EN/index.html
Bibliography: http://www.kcbs.ntpc.edu.tw/2020cyberfair/SH/AIL_EN/narrative.html

School: Kang Chiao International School
    New Taipei City, Taiwan, Republic of China

8 students, ages 15 to 16 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on February 25, 2020. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2017, 2018, 2019

Classes and Teachers: Mr. Hsiao Shih-Hsuan, Mr. Wins Peng

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.kcbs.ntpc.edu.tw/2020cyberfair/SH/AIL_EN/narrative.html

Project Overview

1. Description of Our Community

Taiwan, an island nation once called Formosa, which means 'beautiful island', is filled with beauty of both nature and humans. With the increase of the elderly population and the decline of newborn, the ratio of the young and middle-aged population is increasing. In response to this situation, in Taiwan there are one in 40 migrates who came from Southeast Asia. In the capital of Taiwan, Taipei, there are nearly 100,000 foreign workers who move to work in industry and social welfare, and make up for the lack of work in the industrial chain. Beside the yearning toward home, there is also a cultural and food incompatibility when traveling alone in a foreign place. Walking on the streets of Taipei, there are various kinds of Southeast Asian grocery stores. A small Indonesian Street on Beiping West Road around Taipei Station has attracted the attention of many Indonesian migrant workers, the street fulfilled their desire of eating the food from their hometown. Taipei Main Station, an important hub of Taiwan's transportation, is the bridge to connect north and south, it is also a comfort circle for the Southeast Asian workers while in Taiwan. Therefore, migrant workers can be seen at Taipei Station every weekend. There are even Southeast Asian workers from Hualien, the far eastern part of Taiwan, came to Taipei to meet their friends, so that they can have a little rest while still living in the working environment.

2. Summary of Our Project

The project focuses on the Southeast Asian migrant workers’ dilemma when they are working in Taiwan, so we can better understand how non-profit organizations help the Southeast Asian workers to improve their lives. In many project sites, hospitals or even private houses, people can see foreign migrant workers. They generally come to Taiwan because they cannot find suitable jobs in their home countries to support family expenses. However, after coming to Taiwan, incomplete legal provisions and measures have deprived these migrants of their work rights, and their lives and property cannot be fully protected. Relevant social adaptation issues have been generated, leading to biased news reports, allowing the public to have a social stereotype on them, which also deepens the difficulty for the migrant workers to of blend in the society. A team of two former members of The-4-Way-News makeup Migrants’ Park. They are devoted to writing fair and unbiased reports and translate the reports into languages that migrant workers can read, so that they can read while working in Taiwan. The two also hope such reports can change Taiwan society's impression of foreign migrant workers.

3. Our Computer and Internet Access

A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:more than 50%

B. Number of workstations with Internet access in the classroom:1

C. Connection speed used in the classroom:not sure

D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:more than 6

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

When we were doing the research, we could only find limited information about Migrants' Park. In order to solve this problem, we invited the founder for an interview, so that we can learn more about the association. Another problem we faced during the project is that we encounter the prohibition of not coming to school due to the break-out of the CoronaVirus. We figured that we can use on-line communicators such as LINE to discuss our project, and complete our works in google drive.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

Participation in International Schools CyberFair makes us as a more active citizen. We had learned about various groups of people who need help from society and different groups of people who are putting effort on helping the society. From this learning, we want to promote these groups of people and association’s caring to the world and make people feel the temperature of this society.

6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?

Through this interview, we realized that teamwork is the most important part of this special study. It contains three different elements. First, trust is one of the elements. Team members must trust each other in the group and believe that the other party can complete their own tasks. In the team, there must be one or more clear goals, so that everyone can move toward the goal, and each person must play a role, clearly know their tasks, and indeed to implement, otherwise our time will only be wasted. In the process of discussion, it is inevitable that the members of the group will have different opinions and ideas, and they may not be able to identify with others. Therefore, they should communicate and coordinate in a constructive and respectful manner, and accept opinions that are different from their own in order to bring the best way to reconcile your team. We truly learn the word “teamwork” as we do it. The internet is a much bigger learning area for all students. We can find most of our answers on the internet as we face the problem. Traditionally, people use books for their learning. When they have any questions on the book, they could often only ask the teacher for help. As learning on the internet, we can search for the answer by ourselves, this makes us as a more independent thinker. Independent thinkers are important, it makes our future better because we deal things by ourselves not rely on others. Furthermore, from the internet, we can see various kinds of answers from the world, this makes us think more internationally as learning on the book, can’t learn all these traits.

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Project Elements

1) What information tools & technologies did you used to complete your CyberFair project?

The list of our tools and technologies of helping us complete our CyberFair project are some software such as, Youtube, Google Chrome and Safari, Google Docs, Google Form, Google Drive, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Muse, iMovie and PowerDirector. Some physical facilities such as laptops, printers, phones, digital cameras, and monocular cameras. And some other tools such as, Optical fibre network, Wi-Fi and place for field interview. We think Wi-Fi and our laptop are the most valuable tools because we use them most often to complete our project. We have been using our laptop to finish most of our research and our organization of data. We also use our laptop to make our website. The corporate of our laptop with the Wi-Fi makes our project go more smoothly.

2) In what ways did you act as "ambassadors" and spokespersons for your CyberFair project both on-line and in person.

As the rise of population aging and the lack of employment in factories, the number of migrant workers from southeast asia began to rise gradually. Not only the difference in the language they speak, the food they eat, and their cultural, stereotypes and the fake news have also deepened the gap between Taiwanese and those migrant workers. As a result, it is the time for us to help them overcome these difficulties. For our group, with the advanced technology and internet, we found out the two non-profit organizations, “Migrants’ Park”, an online platform that report news articles and “ONE-FORTY”, which established an online learning courses, enables migrant workers to study while working. We, as the ambassadors, contacted the people in our community through phone calls and emails at first. Second, we make a confirmation on the date and the specific location for the interviews. Next, we discussed approximately thirty critical questions that we might be asking during the conversation. Then the last step is our interview and actual visit, gathering additional information for our research project. Throughout these steps, we learned that the role of ambassadors is not an easy job, it requires good communication skills in order to finish the interview part. Furthermore, people were impressed by our research topic. Since the topic regarding Taiwan’s migrant workers has not yet been discussed widely, some people who have filled out our questionnaire have interesting responses for us. One thing, some people believe that the questionnaire regarding our topic has broadened their horizon by the profound information they get from the questions. Yet, the issues of Taiwan’s migrant workers are now lacking trustworthy information that are accessible to people, our project and the questionnaire have provided profound background knowledge to them, revising their knowledge on those southeast asian workers.

3) What has been the impact of your project on your community?

Migrant workers interact with the community through different faces; for instance, take part in toil works that most Taiwanese found difficult to do. However, stereotype and discrimination having in the society and prejudicial news about these migrant workers tends to affect their treatment from their employers. Consequently, through our Web pages, individuals will learn the correct facts about these workers, correcting the stereotypes that already existed as well as exploring different organizations that had devoted to these issues and may have opportunities to donate money to them. In order to finish this project, we had interviewed ONE-FORTY and Migrant-Park for their contribution in this field. And therefore, we had formed bonds with these two organizations in which our school’s fundraising may focus on this issue and have further connections.

4) How did your project involve other members of your community as helpers and volunteers?

The most direct help we received was from our teachers at school, Mr. Shiao and Mr. Peng, who assisted our website construction and school affairs such as absence due to interviews conducted with ONE-FORTY and Migrant. The interviewees, Kevin Chen from ONE-FORTY and Asuka Lee from Migrant, also helped and participated significantly for our in depth research about the contemporary migrant workers’ issues and how the organizations empower them. Though their website provided some degree of information, it was a great pleasure to meet the founders in person for further questions related to their future goals, current difficulties and how the migrant workers respond to their help.

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View our CyberFair Project (Project ID: 8523)

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