訪談內容

 

Team Introduction

 

　　　　My name is Kevin, I am ONE-FORTY’s founder. ONE-FORTY has been founded since 2015. It has been founded for almost 5 years. We are focusing on helping migrant workers in Taiwan. They are workers from Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand. The assistance that ONE-FORTY wants to provide is education and skills training. We have our own migrant student school with a variety of courses. I hope they can learn a lot of useful things other than their work in Taiwan, so once they go back to their country, they can really improve their lives. We are also working on the initiative for the general public, that is, let Taiwanese understand the story behind the Southeast Asian migrants. There are still a lot of people having negative stereotypes regarding them. When people think of them, they will associate them with negative things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Q1： What are your thoughts on improving this team?

 

A：　　Our team is quite a small team. Our team comprises less than 15 people. It is a very small and newly formed organization. Compared with other non-profit organizations with 15-year existence, our organization was founded for only 4 years. The number of migrants that can be served is actually limited. For example, most of our targets are Indonesians, but in fact, there are many other migrant workers from various countries. Therefore, if we want to improve, our goal would be how do we make more migrant workers from different countries participate in our plan.

 

 

Q2：How can the public be concerned about migrant workers' issues?

 

A：　　The way people communicate is not the same because it is unlikely that one thing is applicable to everyone. Since the ONE-FORTY team is young, our average age is only 25 years old, so we are now trying to change the students, who are about the same age as us, impression about the Southeast Asian migrant workers. We are more familiar with this group of students, so we are more likely to know what they need and what kind of things they like. We have written a lot of articles that are mainly stories of migrant workers. Stories such as, Why came to Taiwan, why coming abroad, and what kind of dream does he or she have when going back to their hometown? Therefore, we have been putting the articles in our blog and some other online media. We organize monthly cultural exchange activities for young adults, and since the participants are young adults, we hope to make the activities fun, such as cooking, picnicking, and traveling. They also enjoy going to the exhibition, so we visit Huashan 1914 Creative Park and Songshan Cultural and Creative Park.

 

 

Q3：What is the current result?

 

A：　　To inhibit social stereotypes, we continue to organize the activities, such as cultural exchange day, home of peace “ the Sunday of South-Eastern Asia,” which the nostalgic migrant workers can feel their homelands’ culture. This activity takes place on Sunday monthly, in other words, there were over 100 events throughout the past five years. We held exhibitions too. The photography exhibition in Songshan attracted ten thousand visits. The year before, twenty-thousand people came to our art exhibition in Huashan, so this is another achievement. There are many people who join our activities, physically. We will continue our practice in the future as well, the monthly activity and annual exhibition. Since we discover that young adults enjoy watching YouTube, we would like to put more videos on our channel with contents of our past articles, instead of in a video form, and the migrant workers’ personal stories.

 

　　 　　Yes, the videos include their stories told by others. We also keep our contact with them after they return, many of them opened a store, found a job, with all sorts of achievements that we can share with.

 

 

Q4：What are the biggest problem you faced since its establishment?

 

A：　　As we’ve just said, the magnitude of our team is small because this is a non-profit organization, eighty-percent of our fund relies on donations from the public and sponsors from foundations or enterprises. Since we have limited funds, we can not increase the number of people in our organization, further affecting our ability to help nearby countries. Lacking financial resources is a critical problem.

 

Q5：What motivates you to not give up?

 

A：　　The feedback from the migrant workers, especially when they liked the courses and became successful after the course. Since the school was established five years ago, some of the migrant workers have returned to their home country. We would visit Indonesia or the Philippines each year, discovering that our assistance made a difference in their lives. One of them opened a clothing shop, which was quite successful. The shop gave her a stable life for supporting her family.

 

　　　　There are also workers setting up public welfare groups like us when they return to their country. For example, a student set up a volunteer group, which then started to clean the beach or clean their community. They learned how to do this with us, and they brought that spirit back to their country. After hearing this story, we’ve noticed that we’ve affected a lot of migrants. Their stories pushed me forward.

 

Q6：When you encounter foreign workers who

are unwilling to receive help, what is your attitude?

 

A：　　It’s nothing special. We think that everyone has their own concern or their own preference. Even though we have schools for those migrants, it is tiring for many migrant workers. They have jobs to do from Monday to Saturday, such as a nurse or a factory worker. Sometimes they only have one day of vacation in a month. It would be a tiring task to study Chinese, computer or financial management on a holiday (unless he or she has great motivation). If they want to spend time with friends on Sundays to relax, there is nothing wrong with that. Everyone has their freedom to choose what they want to do.

 

 

Q7：What are the prerequisites for establishing a Migrant Workers' School?

 

A：　　First, our classroom is just two minutes away from Taipei Main Station, so it is convenient for migrant workers to come. When they come to Taiwan, they don’t understand Chinese at all, so if the classroom is located at an inconvenient place, it would be very troublesome for them. Next, the courses will be in Indonesian for workers from there, including teaching materials, slides, and lectures by teachers. These are some practices that are more based on the needs of students.

 

Q8：How are online courses planned?

 

A：　Online courses are in the form of short videos. Each one is 5 to 10 min because a nursing worker may not be able to learn for a long time, it is unlikely for them to be free for two hours. Therefore, they can use any spare minute, around 5 to 10 minutes would be efficient enough.

 

Q9：If you want to take a step closer to help with migration,

are there any good suggestions and methods?

 

A：　 What we are doing is getting them learning language and other skills, but they often don’t understand their rights nor with Taiwan regulations. There are many examples that they may not be aware of their salary being deducted, and yes, maybe unreasonably deducted.

 

　　　　For example, a home nurse was asked to take part in a lot of work, such as going to a restaurant to help. Many workers do not know their rights, they don't know what part of their job meets the requirements and what doesn’t. If there is a chance, we should provide more information like this to them.

 

 

 

Q10：How can I tell if these courses are helpful for foreign migration?

 

A：　　We need to evaluate this by ourselves. We had questionnaires for them before and after class for self-evaluation. For example, whether I felt integrated into the society of Taiwan. Whether I perform well in language skills and expression skills. Regardless, the most effective measure is to have a test. Towards the end of the semester, we will have a test that is approved by the government. The test is actually a tool for them to check if they have improved.

 

Q11：What are the Key elements for ONE-FORTY to success ?

 

A：　　First of all, we decided to focus on this issue when people are not aware of this. It was about five years ago in 2015. At that time there were very few people who paid attention to migrants and migrant workers, we started to be aware of this topic earlier than others. We are also the first in Taiwan to use education and training of migrants to help the migrant workers. Of course, there are many other organizations in Taiwan. However, relatively few people help migrants by providing them education.

 

Q12：Are you planning to expand the capacity of the team?

 

A：　　Yes, there are a lot of methods to extend the project. Actually, we won’t open a new office. Instead, we have an online learning system that posts videos on our youtube channel. There are 200 videos right now. Around 40000 Indonesians have watched and learned from the video from different places in Taiwan. Even on smaller islands around Taiwan. This is the way we would like to expand.

 

Q13: Do you keep on contact to the people who got helped?

 

A：　　It’s all about regularity. Every student who graduates within either 6 months or above would provide their contact number and also join a former student group chat. We hope they can share their story after graduation.

 

　　　　The business they start, what kinds of jobs they found, or any other information. We still keep in touch with them because migrant workers are in the group chat. Some workers are more active, and some of them post fewer posts or even hard to contact.

 

Q14：What are the reasons that causes the lack of respect and understanding

between foreign migrant workers and the local people ?

 

A：　There are two reasons that form barriers between Taiwanese and migrant workers. First and foremost, people rarely have opportunities to interact with them, unless they have home care at home. Moreover, we don’t have the chance to chat with them. Also, the media promotes the negative side of migrant workers. Therefore, without any actual interaction and wrong information from the media, people form greater bigotry and stereotypes.

 

Q15：Do you cooperate with other units?

 

A：　Yes, collaboration is essential. We have collaborated with government officials. From the government officials’ aspect, we can make changes to policies. What we hope to change is when migrant workers arrive at Taoyuan Airport. We can optimize the policy, for instance, we would like to modify the video or the pamphlet. This way, migrant workers can have a better experience when they arrive in Taiwan. We also cooperated with businesses. There are many migrant workers in the factory. So collaboration enables us to help them train migrant workers in the factories.

 

 

Q16：The proudest assistance project?

 

A：　Well, it may be our main service, which is the migrant school because we can really see the migrant workers changing their lives after they learn here. When they return back to their own country, they will have a better future. Many of them join Taiwanese businessmen as an interpreter, some of them even opened shops. Overall, their salary would be two or three times higher than the others. When their lives become better, it's the most practical.

 

Q17：One of the most impressive students?

 

A：　Mandala. She had participated in our course when I founded this organization. So she’s our student for the first phase, 2015. She said that she would like to open a store by herself when she goes back. Since she likes animals, she wants to open a pet store or a bird shop because families in Indonesia hang a birdcage in front of the door. Later, she drew a mind-map about her dream. As an energetic and passionate person, she formed a band by herself since she enjoys singing. Her band went to different places to perform, becoming more popular over time. After she went back, she opened a bird store in Indonesia. She even painted one of the walls with the ONE-FORTY’s logo to thank all the members who helped her and inspired her to succeed. Furthermore, Mandala is the one who established a volunteer group, as mentioned previously. With her experience with the group members of ONE-FORTY, she learned a lot and hoped to bring it back to her country. They worked to clean up beaches and communities. She is an example of successfully reaching her goal after receiving assistance from us.

 

 

Q18：If other students also wants to contribute to the Association,

 what is your suggestions?

 

A：　　Actually, contributing to society is not a difficult job to do. Instead of doing something huge, we can start by putting more attention on them or learning about the stories behind them. Also, we can provide them more privacy and resting time. On the other hand, if we do not have migrant workers around us, we can pay closer attention to related issues or organizations. By attending activities, we can choose to learn about their culture and language, as a way to become closer to them.

 

Q19： What are the results of migrant workers learning Chinese?

 

A：　There's a student, Yani, has been learning Chinese for a year and a half, including listening, speaking, reading, and writing. In response to her hard work on learning Chinese, she became an interpreter when she went back to her own country. On average, people in Indonesia earn about NTD 6000 a month. However, she earns about triple, which is NTD 18000. Although it seems common to us, eighteen thousand is a really huge number in Indonesia. This is a really practical change brought to her. She is now able to support her family, lives a better life, and enables a higher level of education for her children.

 

 

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