Never too old to participate
“It’s all hot air!” You used to hear these words very often from elderly residents of Longtan Village in Yunlin County’s Dongshi Township. In that remote, predominantly rural community with its aging population, most people will probably be baffled if you talk to them about “civic engagement.” But when asked what they think of their community, they all have something to say.
Things were quite different there a few years ago. With the disappearance of the close-knit interpersonal networks that characterize traditional rural communities, old farmers went to work alone and then returned home alone to sit in front of their televisions, day in, day out. Some of those who lived alone even died alone, their bodies not being discovered until several days after they had passed away.
The involvement of the Yunlin County Participatory Democracy Association has brought significant changes to this community. Devoted to the promotion of grassroots democracy, youngsters like Wang Jyun-kai, Wu Song-lin and Hsu Wei-ching have been collaborating with Yunlin Favorlang River Community College, which has obtained funding from the Ministry of Education’s “Learning Cities” project. They have gradually obtained the support of the village chief and of members of Longtan’s community development association in order, slowly but steadily, to make changes happen in the village, which had so long been in decline.
But mobilizing the villagers has turned out to be a herculean task. Past experience showed that you could at best expect two or three people to turn up at meetings to discuss communal matters. These meetings inevitably came to nothing. In order to encourage more villagers to participate, the village chief went to great lengths, visiting every household to listen to opinions and to invite everyone to attend public meetings.
Although the budget available to the villagers amounted to just NT$100,000, a consensus was reached during a meeting that a community kitchen needed to be established, something that many residents had long hoped for. “The idea of a community kitchen is not just to ensure that there’s good food for old people; it’s also to ensure that we can see them every day.” Village chief Huang Shiyuan is very much aware that even more than protecting the physical health of elderly people, it is vitally important to forge stronger ties between the villagers so as to establish interpersonal networks that can provide mutual care and support within this ageing community. “I call this ‘a connection of love.’”
In Taiwan, participatory budgeting was first advocated by several academics, such as Wan Yu-ze, professor of sociology at National Sun Yat-sen University.