1.Project origins
The YDA organized the Youth Community Participation and Action Project from 2006 to 2017. The project encouraged self-formed youth teams to act locally; identify with their hometowns and the land where they grew up; transform their ideas, expertise, and creativity into real participation; and, by getting involved, assist the revitalization and development of local communities. In 2018, the project focus shifted to young professionals. We called on ambitious youth to be changemakers, engage in local development, and introduce new changes to communities. Bringing in resources from relevant government agencies, we jointly help youth start being dreamers, then actors, and finally changemakers.
We designed the Development and Preparation of Youth Gathering Points for Local Revitalization Project to strengthen local talent development at the front-end and dovetail with the National Development Council’s project to accelerate local revitalization. In 2021, we established permanent learning spots in partnership with local youth actors. These are focal points for action, where young people can experience and understand local culture. As the locations go into operation, they will help guide youth to get involved in local development.
2.Project goals
（1） Motivate youth to identify with their homeland, target local needs, engage in community revitalization, and establish local roots by acting locally.
（2） Establish model Educational Youth Gathering Points in partnership with local youth actors, develop diverse systematic courses, and guide young people to participate in local matters.
（3） Increase the local influence of young people by gradually expanding their networks in a point-line-plane way through mutual brainstorming, learning, and exchanges between individual youth and Educational Youth Gathering Points.
3.Project management
（1） Educational Youth Gathering Points
We recruit founders and youth with long-term （five years or more） involvement in their local community to jointly establish Educational Youth Gathering Points. They then draw on their own fields of interest, local actions, and experience in talent development to organize hands-on activities, lectures, on-site learnings, and other systematic courses that teach young people who care about their community and social issues how to participate in their community, understand local issues, and learn local knowledge. They also help people who have a certain foundation in community issues to genuinely get involved in local work or sustainable development through in-depth participation.
（2） Dreamer training
We encourage young people aged 15 to 35 years old to pay attention to local issues and have dreams and ideas for their community. By learning and taking part in trainings at their Educational Youth Gathering Point, they become versed in the basic principles of local activism and revitalization. They can then propose action plans and on-site studies to practically show their concern for local issues.
（3） Call for Action Plans （Actors to Changemakers） Two to five teams of young people aged 18 to 35 years old will propose action plans targeting their hometowns, the land where they grew up, and the communities that they care about. The goal is to improve community problems through practical actions invested in local development and revitalization
4.Expected results
（1） Establish Educational Youth Gathering Points, teach local knowledge to pioneering young people who are passionate about their communities, motivate them to participate in community issues, and help them propose action plans by guiding them in project design and practice.
（2） Select action groups committed to their hometowns and the land where they grew up to become community actors who can create local sustainable development opportunities.
（3） Build a framework to enable local youth to pool their resources in a youth action communications platform.