Starting as a youth ambassador
After joining the International Youth Ambassadors program as a college freshman back in 2014, Hu traveled to Canada, the United States, and Belize, and she realized she had a boundless thirst for knowledge about the world.
After her term as a youth ambassador ended, through the “W.island” program Hu turned her attention to the problems faced by migrant workers and long-term immigrants in Taiwan. She worked hard at part-time jobs to raise money and, with four other National Cheng Kung University students, went to the hometowns of three immigrants from Vietnam to make a documentary film about their families.
“After making the documentary, I discovered a discount airplane ticket from Thailand to Berlin that was incredibly cheap—it only cost NT$10,000 or so.” Even today Hu believes that this was Fate’s way of enabling her to make a connection with Germany. At the time, she never dreamed that this journey would completely transform her future.
The Syrian Civil War has been going on for more than ten years, and fighting has only intensified over time. It already has the second highest death toll of any war in the 21st century. When Hu went to Berlin, she saw many Middle Eastern people, and met a young Syrian man who brought her to where he and his people were living: a refugee shelter. Using very basic English, the young man explained to Hu: “Our country is at war. We fled here, and Germany gave us shelter under the Refugee Convention.”
Hu became friends with the refugees. In the course of their interactions, there were people who received phone calls telling them that family members who were still in Syria had been killed by bombing or in combat there. “Death can come at any time. It turns out that simply surviving is very difficult.”
Seeing the assistance provided to refugees by Europe, the US, Japan, and Korea, Hu was “startled by the vast distance between refugees and the people of Taiwan.” Besides feeling deep sympathy for the people displaced by war, Hu began to feel a sense of mission growing deep in her mind. “What pushed me to become what I am today were profound pangs of conscience and frustration. I began to ask myself: What can I and my country do for refugees?”
Each week Hu Chun-yuan took some time out to design interactive learning games, to help Syrian children better understand their Arabic and math lessons.