China Development’s Tutors 100 x Care 100 program held a ceremony on September 6, 2018, where 100 college students, under the witness of CDIB Capital’s President Chun-Huei Ho, received scholarships and committed to 100 hours of assistance to underprivileged students with their school work over the next year. This program has been in place for twelve years, distributing NT$60mn in scholarships to 1,200 college students volunteering as tutors.
At the ceremony, President Ho encouraged the awarded college students to live a meaningful life. He said there were three kinds of life: a miserable life, where a person lives under the poverty line; a good life, where one has enough food to eat; and a meaningful life, a life people should pursue when basic daily needs were met. He congratulated the students because they not only fulfilled their own daily needs but could also help underprivileged students, and were embarking on a meaningful life journey.
Mengzhu Chang, a National Taiwan University student who was awarded for two straight years, once assisted a junior high school student suffering from domestic violence. Ms. Chang helped make the student become interested in learning by designing games and using picture books. Her efforts paid off and won the student’s trust. Being the only volunteer accepted by the student’s family as a helper, she expressed that the experience was very rewarding and plans to be a social worker in the future.
Yuhan Chen, a student at National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences, assisted a junior high school student with a learning disability. She said the volunteer work reassured her interest in counseling and plans to work as a counselor at teen adolescent placement services agencies after graduation. Both Ms. Chang and Ms. Chen emphasized that they gained more from the volunteer program than those being helped.
Unlike many other scholarship programs, China Development’s Tutors 100 x Care 100 program requires scholarship receivers to spend 100 hours helping underprivileged students with their school work. Since the environments in which these volunteers grew up in were similar to those of the students they helped, they were more empathetic, which made it easier for them to offer eye-opening experiences to help the students discover new options in life.
