More volunteers will participate in the 11-day Summer Deaflympics than in any previous single event held in Taiwan, another sign of the country’s growing altruism that has also been reflected in responses to recent natural disasters.
Lee Yu-fan, who is in charge of recruiting volunteers for the Taipei Deaflympics Organizing Committee, said the 9,763 volunteers who have signed up to help with the Games, ranging from 15 to 72 years of age, come from all walks of life.
The volunteers will mainly be responsible for hosting visitors, providing information, accompanying teams, translating and offering traffic guidance.
The volunteers are divided into three categories: sign-language, general and foreign language service volunteers.
Most of them are college students, but many hearing-impaired people have also agreed to serve.
The volunteers first took part in basic training and sign-language courses and were then immersed in a three-month intensive training program course to become familiarized with the services they will have to provide and the needs of the event’s organizers.
Among them, there are 1,100 foreign-language volunteers who can speak other languages including English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Russian, Czech, Polish, Arabic, Japanese and Korean.
The enthusiastic response to the call for volunteers reflects a growing trend of altruism in the public.
Mothers of schoolchildren serving as volunteers outside schools to protect the safety of students has become a familiar scene, and volunteers ready to give a helping hand can often be found in hospitals.
According to Ministry of the Interior statistics, there are nearly 480,000 people in Taiwan who have registered as volunteers and engaged in a total of nearly 50 million hours of volunteer service.
The Environmental Protection Administration also estimates that 150,000 people have volunteered to regularly clean communities, beaches and patrol rivers.
Aside from giving their time, local residents have been generous to people in need. The social welfare sector estimates that Taiwanese donate around NT$20 billion (US$608.7 million) a year to social causes.
Public contributions to help victims of Typhoon Morakot totaled NT$13.8 billion, and Taiwanese also donated NT$5 billion when a magnitude 8.0 earthquake struck Sichuan Province on May 12 last year.
Local residents have also generously donated blood. Lin Kuo-sin, chairman of the Taiwan Blood Services Foundation, said that Taiwan’s blood donation rate was 7.86 percent of the population, the second highest in the world behind only the Netherlands. It was 1.5 times that of the US and two times that of Japan.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), spokeswoman Yang Chih-yu (楊智伃) and Legislator Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介) would be summoned by police for questioning for leading an illegal assembly on Thursday evening last week, Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) said today. The three KMT officials led an assembly outside the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office, a restricted area where public assembly is not allowed, protesting the questioning of several KMT staff and searches of KMT headquarters and offices in a recall petition forgery case. Chu, Yang and Hsieh are all suspected of contravening the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) by holding
PRAISE: Japanese visitor Takashi Kubota said the Taiwanese temple architecture images showcased in the AI Art Gallery were the most impressive displays he saw Taiwan does not have an official pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka, Japan, because of its diplomatic predicament, but the government-backed Tech World pavilion is drawing interest with its unique recreations of works by Taiwanese artists. The pavilion features an artificial intelligence (AI)-based art gallery showcasing works of famous Taiwanese artists from the Japanese colonial period using innovative technologies. Among its main simulated displays are Eastern gouache paintings by Chen Chin (陳進), Lin Yu-shan (林玉山) and Kuo Hsueh-hu (郭雪湖), who were the three young Taiwanese painters selected for the East Asian Painting exhibition in 1927. Gouache is a water-based
Taiwan would welcome the return of Honduras as a diplomatic ally if its next president decides to make such a move, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. “Of course, we would welcome Honduras if they want to restore diplomatic ties with Taiwan after their elections,” Lin said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, when asked to comment on statements made by two of the three Honduran presidential candidates during the presidential campaign in the Central American country. Taiwan is paying close attention to the region as a whole in the wake of a
OFF-TARGET: More than 30,000 participants were expected to take part in the Games next month, but only 6,550 foreign and 19,400 Taiwanese athletes have registered Taipei city councilors yesterday blasted the organizers of next month’s World Masters Games over sudden timetable and venue changes, which they said have caused thousands of participants to back out of the international sporting event, among other organizational issues. They also cited visa delays and political interference by China as reasons many foreign athletes are requesting refunds for the event, to be held from May 17 to 30. Jointly organized by the Taipei and New Taipei City governments, the games have been rocked by numerous controversies since preparations began in 2020. Taipei City Councilor Lin Yen-feng (林延鳳) said yesterday that new measures by