Q12

關於僑務委員會舉辦這樣的活動，你有什麼建議或鼓勵或需要改進的？
What are your suggestions or comments for OCAC about organizing this trip?

Perhaps it was just me, but I really didn't know what was going to go on in the program until I got there. Having said this, if that is the case with the majority of the people, I believe OCAC should at least notify us a brief iteniary of what is going to happen on these two weeks BEFORE we sign up for it. Also, for the presentations, we should have a better idea at the beginning what we were looking for, instead of having us 4 days into the trip, someone telling us that we needed to think of a different idea. Lastly, I think it's important to cut down the amount of places we go to, and instead, focus more on the places that are more important. It's not to say one place is more important than another, but because the trip is only two weeks, there needs to be some sense of priority. Choose a few places, discard a few, and spend more time at those places where it was chosen. I can guarantee we'll probably absorb a lot more if we aren't rushed.

A) Participants should be given more choice and greater freedom. The program would be significantly improved if participants could select what activities they wanted to participate in, and were given more free time during the day (ie, before sunset). I find that I learn most about a place when I can take time to explore on my own, to absorb the sights and tastes of the area. For example, when I awoke an hour early to go for a bike ride with two other girls, I learned much more than the rest of the day combined. The format of this trip, in which we were taken to a place and forced to listen to a speaker using a megaphone, was not conducive to truly understanding and appreciating a place.
B) Participants should be allowed to take 24 hours to visit their families, particularly if the group travels near an area where a participant's family resides.
C) More information about the program should be provided in both English and Chinese, at least 2 months in advance of the trip. I did not receive adequate explanation describing the trip, so did not know what to expect.
D) The thermometer used on the trip should be either disposable or cleaned with antiseptic / alcohol. Transferring a thermometer from one person to another is a good way to spread germs and infection.
E) Counselors obviously tried very hard on this trip; however, they sometimes failed to realize when their plans were not appropriate, and could not seem to adjust accordingly. For example, it began to rain while we were in Puli; nevertheless, we were forced to stand outside and get wet in order to listen to a speaker. In this case, it would have been better if counselors had changed activities or shortened the presentation and allowed us to seek shelter. The counselors could have done a better job by being more flexible.

Need more time for interaction, with students from Taiwan or aboard, either formal or informal.

A smaller group might be easier to manage, especially for events like frog-watching where large groups can’t see anything.

OCAC should reduce the number of events and instead increase the time of what events we have. We should also spend more free time with each other, especially the Taiwan students in order to learn more about some “real” aspects of Taiwan from their unbiased, truthful opinions. We should also have free time instead of a forum when seeing other students from Taiwan.

I think that visiting the coasts more would be good. Going to a beach would be very cool.

Dropping the presentation at the end and replacing it with discussion may help; the trip needs much better execution.

1.Include social exchanges with colleges around Taiwan. For example, designate a few hours to drive to National Taipei University and hold an assembly where we can gather and make new friends. Do this with several universities while encouraging participants to make new friends.
2.Allow one or two more free days to explore the city on your own – which goes hand-in-hand with the making friends aspect.
3.Allow more activities that appeals to a group of selective young professionals and academics as this group by giving more opportunities to meet Taiwan professionals and scholars, as to appeal to their networking aspect, in which participants might gain incentive to later return to Taiwan to work or study.
4.Continue to give this great tour of Taiwan but try not squeezing so much places into 10 days because we don’t have that much time to enjoy it all.
5.Please notify the participants that they will be doing a presentation/blog or any deliverables before arrival to the trip so that they may be prepared to do so.

I just wanna say that its on my list of top 5 best trip that i ever made!!!!

Arranging Schedule must flexible and efficient!!!

1.The application could be clearer…when figuring out what to write in the qualifications box, I had no idea where to begin (i.e. college credentials or anything that I’ve accomplished in life?)
2.Perhaps give a little blurb about each location/what we’re expecting to do at each place before the program starts (so we’re not learning so many new things when we’re on the site. Particularly with the language difference, it’s hard for us to absorb so much information at once)
3.Target fewer places, but spend longer time at each place

Please do not invite professor lee anymore thank you.Allow more free space within the schedule for better flexibility.

Keep up the great work! I had the best trip ever! Improvements could be less time on the bus if possible or maybe driving at night if safe enough.

More information prior to departure. Perhaps a formal letter explaining the purpose of the trip, EXACTLY what is on the itinerary and formal welcome. It isn’t love boat, after all.

Keep on doing it.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE put some information about the trip, its purpose and why we’ve been invited on the website or at least send it in an email. Most of us relied on hearsay to find out about this trip, rather than finding out for ourselves. Hearing my mother say “it’s a really prestigious trip” does nothing to convince me to come to Taiwan.
Having said that, I have had a fantastic time on this trip. The people I have met, the food I have eaten and the places we have been really do make me want to visit Taiwan again.

Please allow counselors to participate in after-hours events with the delegates and drink some alcohol. The counselors delegates on the trip just as much as our friends as everyone else, and the strict divide made interaction feel inhibited.

I am very grateful to have been chosen to participate on this trip. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity to be in the presence of a figure such as President Ma, and I fully appreciate the hospitality of the Taiwanese government in allowing us to meet him. The majority of the trip was made enjoyable, though, by the other participants on the trip and by the group leaders. Many times, my group of friends on the trip would say, “It doesn’t matter where we go tomorrow because we’re all going together and will find a way to make it fun.” In the future, I hope instead that participants will say, “We’re going to have fun tomorrow because we’re all going together AND the location is fun.” I truly enjoyed my experience on this trip because of my fellow participants, and I hope to make this program even better in the future by making it enjoyable both because of its participants and because of its itinerary.
First of all, the application process is very confusing. The majority of the participants I talked to knew very little about the trip itself because nearly all of the information about it is in Chinese. Many of us cannot read Chinese. It would be very helpful to post information about the trip in multiple languages including English, Spanish, and French, amongst other languages. I tried conducting a Google search about this trip before I came, and I could not find any information about it. Luckily, my parents can read Chinese and thought it was a worthwhile trip and encouraged me to attend – in fact, they handled the entire application for me since I could not read Chinese. I never once touched anything OCAC related before coming to Taiwan. Due to the limited amount of information, if my parents had been in any way reluctant to send me on the trip, I might have just ignored the invitation to attend because I did not know anything about the trip. Very few participants knew anything about the trip before arriving in Taiwan.
Likewise, there is no streamlined process for applying to this program. It seems as if each OCAC office in the United States has a different application process. Most of the participants I talked to said they had never heard of this program until their parents received a call about it, inviting them to apply – this is also what happened for me. This trip is such an amazing experience, and the Taiwanese government invests a lot of money and effort into perfecting this trip, so I believe that OCAC should publicize it more readily to the various Taiwanese communities in the world. Nearly every Taiwanese friend I have told about this trip is interested in applying, and that is how it should be – students should be competing to apply for this trip instead of OCAC individually calling students’ parents to ask if they are interested.
Likewise, I found it very surprising that there were no participants from nearby countries such as Japan, Thailand, or the Philippines but that there were thirteen representatives from the United States. Surely there are outstanding Taiwanese expatriate youth in Asia! I think OCAC could improve its publicity plan and recruitment efforts for this trip. I would have liked to see more diversity of nationality on the trip.
Likewise, many participants were very surprised when we were told that we would have a final presentation at the end of the trip – one presentation was supposed to be creative and the other was supposed to be a slideshow. We also had no idea that we needed to keep a group Blog on this trip. In my group, there was much resistance to these announcements. My group was not fundamentally opposed to making the presentation and keeping the blog, it was just that we were unprepared to do so. It is not that we did not want to do the work, it was that OCAC had planned this for us but had not notified us ahead of time to bring the appropriate materials to do so. We were very lucky that two people in our group had laptop computers with advanced Internet capabilities and everyone had brought a digital camera. I think it was very beneficial in the end that we did keep the Blog and made the presentations, but an advance warning before the trip began that we would be doing these activities (and suggestions to bring a laptop or digital camera) would have prevented some of the resistance that occurred on the first evening. This also would have made our Blog posts and presentations even better.
In terms of itinerary, many of the other participants (myself included) were surprised at how little time we spent in the major cities and how much time we spent in the rural areas. Some of the participants had never been back to Taiwan before, and so a greater emphasis on major sites of interest would have made the trip more meaningful. I would have liked to visit more of the tourist sites—for example, we did not have enough time for Taipei 101, which I find to be ridiculous. If there was one place on the trip that I thought we HAD to visit, it was Taipei 101. I don’t understand how we could have spent so much time at some other places but yet cut out Taipei 101 from the itinerary.
For example, I do not think it was necessary to visit the Paper-Making center in Puli. Even though it was interactive, it was a bit childish, especially for those who were in their mid-twenties. Most of all, I don’t think spending a couple of hours making paper and fans really opened our eyes to Taiwanese culture. Likewise, the visit to see frogs was perhaps the least favorite of the majority of the girls on the trip. We went to see the frogs twice in the same night, both times when it was dark outside. Very few of us gained much more than additional mosquito bites, and many of us (myself included) walked in constant fear of a snake or someone putting a frog down our backs. I found this particular excursion unnecessary and unenjoyable.
There was another instance where we visited an elementary school for an afternoon. To this day, I’m not entirely sure why we went to go visit the school or why we spent so much time there.
I am not opposed to visiting rural areas on this trip – I find them quite beautiful, in fact – but for some of these visits, I failed to see how they were supposed to show us the Taiwan culture. Just because a visit is interactive – there is an activity that we can each do – does not mean that it will be meaningful or even enjoyable. In fact, after going to see many of these places in succession, I spoke with someone who had not been to Taiwan before. She told me that these visits were almost creating a negative image in her mind of Taiwan. She thought that Taiwan was ONLY rural. I tried to convince her that it wasn’t, that the cities were amazing places just teeming with life—I tried to tell her that the rural areas we were seeing was not the Taiwan I knew and that there was much more to Taiwan than this tour was showing. Even though the focus of this tour is the Culture and Heritage of Taiwan, I think that, when planning the itinerary, OCAC should not assume that everyone has already seen the major tourist sites. I have been to Taiwan at least ten times before, and I have still never been to the top of Taipei 101. The OCAC should make it a priority to impress the participants on the trip who have never been to the country before—this trip should be encouragement for them to come back. For some of these participants’ first trip to Taiwan, they don’t want to spend their time looking at the 23 different species of frogs; rather, they want to go to the top of Taipei 101 or take a river cruise. They have never seen the island before, and we have to make sure they want to come back.
There were some rural experiences I did enjoy, though. I found the overnight stay with the Aboriginal tribe to be very enjoyable and probably one of the most moving experiences I had on the trip. Making tofu was also very interesting to see, although I thought we might have spent a bit too much time on it. The vegetarian and organic meal at the tea farm was interesting. Making the different dishes at the Comic museum was fun, although we didn’t really see the museum at all.
I thought it was a shame that certain events were taken out of the schedule. As mentioned before, I was very surprised to see that Kaohsiung was not on the itinerary. Also mentioned before, I was shocked that we did not go to Taipei 101. Also made optional was the bike ride in Luminous. This was one of the main draws of the trip that my parents told me about before I came, but the counselors thought we would be too tired to do the bike ride, so they made it optional and allowed us to sleep in. I was determined to still do it, though, and so two other girls and I woke up at 7 AM to experience it, and I’m so happy we did! It was a wonderful experience to really see the beautiful countryside on bike – it is nothing like seeing it through the window of a tour bus or even walking. I wish everyone had been able to experience it, though. Likewise, I wish we could have walked more of Taroko National Park. We saw most of this through the tour bus window, but I think this was one of the main attractions of the trip, and everyone would have liked to spend more time here. A half-day hike through Taroko would have been a worthwhile addition to the trip. Also, on the Saturday after the program was completed, some of the counselors offered to take a small group on a hike up a small mountain with a breathtaking view of Taipei 101. I wish this could have been in our main itinerary because it was simply beautiful. I think all of these activities would have fostered a greater appreciation for the culture and heritage of Taiwan; I highly suggest replacing some of the less inspiring activities currently in the itinerary with these.
I personally believe that the trip should spend half its time in major cities and half of the time in rural areas. There are so many sites of interest in the cities, and I don’t want the trip participants in the future to miss out on them.
Also, the Meeting and Sharing with Outstanding Taiwan Youths would have been better if there were more Taiwanese students. We also should not have conducted discussions in the lecture hall – the seating arrangement is not very conducive to discussions. It would have been helpful to split up and go to different rooms for discussion and then reconvene in the lecture hall to discuss our findings.
I think it was very important for us to take the Taiwan High Speed Rail to show the technological advances of Taiwan transportation, but this entire episode could have been planned better. Because we took the Taiwan High Speed Rail, we had to take a small bag for an overnight stay in Beitou, Taipei. This was also the night we went to the Shilin Night Market—it was very difficult to carry around our extra bag at the Night Market. It was dangerous, too! It did not seem to make much sense for us to take the Taiwan High Speed Rail if our tour bus was driving the exact same distance with the rest of our luggage—we could have just taken the journey with the bus. Also, I feel that there must have been some way to plan the day so that we could take the Taiwan High Speed Rail and our tour bus could have arrived at the hotel that same evening with the rest of our luggage. For instance, we could have parted ways with the tour bus early in the morning so that by the time we took the High Speed Rail and shopped the Night Market for a couple of hours, our bus would have arrived at our hotel. Aside from the purposes of showing newcomers the efficiency of the High Speed Rail, there was not much logic to taking the High Speed Rail.
Overwhelmingly, people really enjoyed River Tracing, so definitely keep that in the itinerary and maybe even consider spending more time there! This was a great team building activity, and it was a wonderful experience!
I believe that this program has a lot of potential to be something great. I made connections with other Taiwanese youth, and these connections will become increasingly important as this global community grows. I truly enjoyed my experience on this trip, and it was amazing to see the natural beauty of Taiwan in places I never knew existed. I am grateful for OCAC planning this trip and taking the time to consider all of our feedback to make this program even better in the future. I am most grateful to OCAC for putting me in touch with the other participants who truly made this trip a memorable experience.

Our schedule does not need to be so packed. It would be nice to have some free time for relaxing or showering in the middle of the day so that we are not completely exhausted and sick by the end of the trip. Maybe we could stay in the same hotel for a more than one day, such as the hot spring hotel, so that people can have time to look around outside the hotel in the daylight. We should also be made aware that we will have to make a video, presentation, and blog prior to coming so we can bring computers.

僑委會的大家長們，可以一起來參加這個好玩的旅行XD不然太可惜了!!

建議僑委會在人選上可以多加考量，也許可以拿掉傑出這樣的字眼，真正去吸引對台灣有興趣，願意回鄉瞭解的海外青年，或許整體而言的效益會更大一些。
至於台灣青年的聯繫上，除了請青輔會推薦外。可能也需要考量這些青年對台灣的認識，希望扮演的角色為何？或藉由這樣的研習希望傳達給海外青年的訊息，以建立台灣青年在團隊中實質的功效。

關於營前的聯繫，不管是僑生還是台灣學生都未被清楚的告知。我想這是因為僑委會跟Taiwanlook聯繫不是很足的緣故吧！

舉辦這種活動是有益的，但效果就可以要再等多舉辦幾屆才可以看得出來。至於建議，我認為在行程上的安排，還需要再進一步精簡！

1.可以給予學員多一點自由，讓學員可以以自己的方式多認識台灣，會更有趣。
2.行前說明可以再詳細一點，包含需準備的用品，以及要進行的事項，例如：需表演、準備才藝。
3.除了教育性的行程，可以多安排一點親近大自然的活動。
4.因為是團體行動，一些麻煩的行程可以儘量避免，也可減輕工作人員的負擔，e.g.搭高鐵、捷運。
5.在同一個地點可以停久一點，可以更深入的探討，以及真正放鬆的體會當地生活，e.g.台北三天、台東三天、台中三天…，不一定要跑很多景點或地方。

很不錯，但要考量他們的中文程度，介紹一些比較專業的議題盡量可以用英文，避免他們的不懂。

希望下次行程不要太趕,有些地方太趕有點可惜,希望可以多花點時間...

可以在特定的區域深入的多待幾天(如北部之旅、東部之旅等等)，以利更加深入了解當地文化。

嗯！我覺得事前的用心很重要！活動前的教育，僑委會要加強…因為很多人壓根是以為來玩的，還有安排的行程其實不用太多，不然會變成走馬看花型，重點是要能啟發，讓大家知道參訪每個地方的實質意義

希望邀請海外青年回台灣的目的能夠更明確, 是希望藉由這個活動讓海外青年更了解台灣, 進而在自己的國家推廣台灣, 或是希望我們因為更了解台灣, 進而考慮未來回台灣發展, 落葉歸根, 這個目的要更清楚的表達.

我覺得這趟活動的事前溝通可以更加完善清楚，而活動中的工作也必須有組織性與規劃，讓團員們能夠按部就班或是分量上能夠合宜，讓大家能在每天緊湊的活動中，提升深度的了解，卻也不會增加過大的負荷。我覺得可以選擇在台灣有歲時節慶時舉辦研習營，可以順道讓華僑們感受到台灣人在信仰上、在生活上的一些精采經驗或是熱衷程度吧！直接參與是更真實的方式。