Active participation
Gladys Lee, now 27 years old, is a journalist for Taiwan Television. In 2004, when she was a student at Taipei Municipal Song-Shan Senior High School, she competed to take part in the third TDE program.
Lee was a vivacious child who loved trying out all kinds of novel ideas and activities. A regular participant in school activities at Song-Shan High, Lee was selected as senior high school student representative for the fifth Asia–Pacific International Youth and Student Carnival, winning the opportunity for an international student exchange to Ulan-Ude, the capital of the Republic of Buryatia in southern Siberia.
With this experience behind her, Lee developed a passion for international exchange activities that provided opportunities for her to explore her potential and better understand the world around her. In her second year at high school, she heard about TDE through one of her teachers. With her desire to experience the world at first hand, she organized a team of classmates who were also interested in participating.
While most students were immersed in school study, Lee sought guidance from a teacher to prepare for the TDE audition and build the props in her spare time. To highlight the characteristics of Taiwan, the team spent a lot of time discussing their strategies and searching out information. Finally, they decided to use the six letters of the word “Taiwan” as hooks to interpret Taiwan from the perspectives of technology, agriculture and indigenous peoples.
Unfortunately, the team wasn’t selected in the competition, but Lee was quite content as she gained considerable experience. “We didn’t win, but I gained a better understanding of myself and Taiwan, and my self-confidence went through the roof,” says Lee.
In February the following year, Lee participated in the HOBY Taiwan Youth Leadership Camp, and was selected from 100-plus participants to represent Taiwan at the two-week HOBY World Youth Leadership Congress in Washington DC, meeting with more than 400 outstanding young people from around the globe. She found that the issues of concern for representatives from different countries and cultural backgrounds were quite different. For example, those from the Middle East were highly concerned about women’s right to education, while representatives from America and Europe were more focused on economic trends, and Africans tended to pay more attention to health issues.
Lee notes that unlike most Taiwanese senior high school students, who are fully focused on schoolwork, youth from abroad develop an awareness of social issues when they are quite young. This brought home a dramatic realization: although she was young, she wasn’t as helpless or impotent as she had thought—she could make a difference and contribute to the nation.
In her second year of university, Lee joined the Taipei Young Women’s Christian Association, and has since been promoted to their board of directors. Despite her busy schedule, she has found the time to help deal with issues on gender equality and domestic violence. As a journalist, this year she will be involved in the reporting of issues from areas such as cross-strait relations and foreign affairs in general.
In the decade since her high-school days, Lee has become interested in a range of diplomatic and international issues. She notes that in the past she disagreed with the notion that one needed proficiency in another language in order to develop a mature international perspective. But with her experience of international exchange activities as well as her journalism work (which takes her abroad on a regular basis), she has come to appreciate that although language skills do not necessarily bring international understanding, they do bring enormous benefits. “A person fluent in another language will better appreciate that country’s history and culture, and thus enhance their international perspective,” says Lee.
Lee says that she had no particular plans for her future when she took part in the international exchange activities. But although that participation didn’t bring immediate gains, all her experiences accumulating piece by piece would benefit her later on in life.
Danny Yang, now a first officer with EVA Air routinely flying people overseas, continues his affection for international travel first nurtured in the TDE program.