Project Overview

 

Outline of the Research Project

1. The category we participate in is Local Leader. 
2. Description of “our local community”: 
Hualien is located on the East coast of Taiwan, facing the great Pacific Ocean, having abundant nature resources and beautiful scenery and unique landforms and geology, and forming the spectacular scenes.  Therefore, it gained its fame as “Taiwan Carrara” and “Eastern Switzerland”. 

Dasin Village is one out of nine villages governed by Guangfu Township in Hualien County.  Head south along Highway No. 9, turn right at the sign at about 255.5km, drive through the culvert under the railway, drive 500 meters and then you can arrive in this village. 

“Christian Prison Fellowship Youth Academy” is located in Dasin Village in Guangfu Township, Mt. Maxi in the north and Nanqingshui River.  The whole building is on the mountainside with wide view and the spirit of great land and people. 

In order to find lost lambs, Prison Fellowship established Youth Academy on the foundation of the mode of Caffery farm. Hoping that by growing faith, opening hopes, counseling with love, those lost lambs in their adolescence can have the opportunities to turn over. 

Brief of the Research Project

  1. Life History of Minister Huang Mingzhen
  2. Minister Huang Mingzhen’s Philosophy 
  3. How Minister Huang Counsel Prisoners
  4. Cases of those who have been counseled by Minister Huang

Prison Fellowship is a religious service group which aims to redeem prisoners.  It was founded by a retired warden Lu Guodong.  In 1988, Minister Huang Mingzhen gave up his well-paid job and came back in Taiwan to be the Chief of Prison Fellowship.  For twenty years, he has been to all prisons, cared about prisoners and rehabilitated people, assisted victims to go out from the shadow, and rebuilt victims’ family.  He has even counseled condemned criminals.  By the questions above and taking students to understand practically, we have interviewed relevant people in the community and units.  Students were in charge of planning interviews and research activities.  They interviewed and made records of learning reports; in the meanwhile, they also collected paper information and resources on the websites.  They sorted all the information they had collected and then finished designing the site.  They wish those who didn’t participate in this research can have deeper understandings of Minister Huang’s social service work. 

We wish that the society can understand how difficult doing social exclusion work is and how urgent it is to do this work.  We also wish that our society can care more about this important issue while they are uncertain which agenda is vital. 

School Internet Environment

Currently, our school internet environment is ADSL broadband.  The facilities in the computer lab are AMD-Sempron-3000+ computers for students of 12 and two for teachers. 

Domestic Internet Environment

A few of the team members have dial-in lines 56k or ADSL broadband.  They can only discussed at school or used email, MSN messenger, FTP and exclusive forum to send files or exchange thoughts. 

Difficulties We Encountered and Solutions

  1. Not familiar with the place and people: the Principal and administration unit assisted and helped to contact relevant units and people. 
  2. Students’ parents helped to contact narrators and interviewees. 
  3. Activity budget was financed by administration units and instructors.  Every one supported each other. 
  4. Teachers drove school van to take students to each interview place. 
  5. Not familiar with the content of the project: students searched information and read relevant books offered by Youth Academy. 
  6. Not enough time: using lunch break and Saturday. 

 

Some Thoughts

Using technology to understand the environment we live in is our greatest happiness.  We visited our community during this time, going to Youth Academy and Zihciang Minimum-Security Prison.  We know more about how the society is changing and the assistant Minister Huang has contributed to delinquent juveniles and prisoners.  We really don’t have much energy and power to change our society, but we hope that by the little seeds we planted, we can make more people understand the contribution Minister Huang made to the society.  We can not accept the idea not caring about others. Therefore, after knowing the importance of the work Minister Huang does to the society, we all hope we can be social workers or volunteers in the future.  We even hope that there will be the second or the third Minister Huang to make efforts to Taiwanese society.