Youth Development Administration, Ministry of Education (YDA) hosted 9 “Regional Revitalization X Youth Forum”, and just had the second one today, under the song “White Cloud” for the opening act by Miaoli’s local artist羅思容(Luo,Sirong). For the sake of this event, the art space老家(SoulxFamily) in Miaoli, which was normally closed on weekends, opened up its front door for the “Miaoli-caring” teens today for special offer.
Recently there are lots of teens making efforts and using their own powers in every corner of Taiwan through practical action. This kind of power has been seen in every generation. In this generation, they use their own ways to love Taiwan, change Taiwan, and make better life and society of Taiwan. Today, in this more than 50-year-old house, the Deliberative Democracy Hosts, who were trained by YDA, and the local-caring teens discussed through One Space discussion model together, thinking how they could build the better life of Miaoli in the future.
In the morning forum, we invited黃鼎堯 (Huang,Dingyao), the director of Tainan Elegant Farmers Art Group, and徐健智(Xu,Jianzhi) the founder of 12 Liao Free Shop, to share the experiences of how they revitalized the local value in the past. They said that regional revitalization is not about hardware expending. It’s about changing the concept and the point of view of “the people”, and the value of the forum is the starting action of people’s mind. As to the afternoon forum, we had the free discussions for the buddies on scene with the subtopics such as” How to build a friendly and supportive environment in Miaoli?”, “Finding the life value of Miaoli”, “The imagination of Miaoli’s art life”, and” How to activate the business industry around Miaoli Train Station and the North Miaoli Business Circle”, inviting everyone to discuss the later action steps together. Most of all, let Miaoli generates new life value, and make the homecoming teens be willing to stay in Miaoli for the rest of their lives.
羅清水(Luo, Qingshui), the director of YDA, said that it was the efforts and energy which YDA felt from them, making him want to have more people know their stories and dreams. Therefore, the Youth Forum this year was combined with NPOs and Social Enterprises in local. With “Regional Revitalization” as the topic and discussing by individual local cases, he hoped to condense the emotions of the locals, making the homecomings discuss the future of their own hometown and what they could do with it.
At the end of the forum, director Luo encouraged everyone and said that the value of“Regional Revitalization X Youth Forum” is not just about finishing the whole 9 forums of it. He hoped that these 9 forums could be a good start of local consensus. There will be 7 more forums with different topics in the future, continuing creating a better living environment of Taiwan.
Welcome all the teens who care about local development in Taiwan. Application link: http://107ypu-letstalk.yda.gov.tw/