The category we chose to participate in for the competition is Community Groups and Special Populations

Our community district is:

Our school resides in Yung Ho City, Taipei County.  It is located near the southeast part of the Taipei Basin and is linked by three bridges over the Xindian River. Yung Ho is as prosperous as Taipei city, and it is well known for its numerous small shops and attractions such as Korean Street, Weekend Farmers' markets, Yang San Lang's Museum and the World Religions Museum.

Project Outline:

In 2002 a group of community volunteers from the Yung Ho District of New Taipei City completed the construction of a 6000 ping wetland area under the Zhongzheng bridge. These volunteers are known as the Shiu Dang Dang Volunteers and the Eco-Teacher Training Class. They are committed to the restoration of wetland areas and aquatic plants through the combining of community resources, organizing workshops and integrating the 11 neighborhoods on the banks of the Xindian River to form a management committee.

In their conservation efforts, community members give up their weekends to go out and collect wild samples of aquatic plants, then transplant them to the experimental farm for restoration. Later the plants are transplanted to the wetlands on the banks of the Xindian River to be planted. Thus allowing endangered species of plants continue reproducing in their natural environment.

The community volunteers have built the Yung Ho Community University Eco-park single-handedly. We hope that through the interviewing of the volunteers, conducting our own field research and case studies, we can produce this topic website. We also hope to be able to gain a thorough understanding of the effort that the community volunteers have put into exploring the previous ecological resources in Yung Ho, as well the involvement of schools, families, community groups to promote awareness of environmental and local issues.

During the course of this project, through talking to the volunteers and experiencing wetland conservation, we hope to learn how to become a good ecology guides in order to promote this area to school children and local residents. Then everyone can use this natural 'ecological classroom', and at the same time get closer to nature and understand the importance of ecological conservation.

Our Internet Environment:

We utilized our school's ample computers to access the Internet: there are 50 computers in the computer lab, 4 computers in the library, each classroom also has its own computer and all of these have direct access to the Internet. Having convenient access to these resources really helped us in facilitating our projects' needs and getting work done.

Challenges and obstacles we overcame:

Class time

Apart from using lunchtimes to complete the work associated with the Cyberfair, we also some of our time outside of school time too. However as we can't forget about our studies, we had to work extra hard in class and not let the Cyberfair hold up our school work.

Assigning jobs

When we worked on guiding people and making the website, our teachers asked us to form 3 teams. Each team had a leader whose responsibility was to make sure everything progressed on time. Each team member worked together well and so we were able to complete the project on time.

Data Collection

The Yung Ho Community University Eco-park has been running since 2002 and lots of people have put their heart and soul into it. From the beginning there has been a lot of data collected and it is difficult to search through. Therefore we spent a lot of time interviewing the volunteers and asking them to provide us with information and photographs.

Experiencing being a guide

During the 2 day guide training camp, we had to memorize a lot of information about plants. Also we had to overcome our nervousness. We didn't have very much time, and this was our biggest challenge.

Working together

For this project we had to interview a lot of people. Every time we finished the interviews, it would take us an hour or so to type up a 10 minutes interview. So we split up into teams of two. One person would listen to the interview and then other person would type. Working together meant we could finish it much more quickly.

Our Project Sound Bite ：

In making this 2011 Cyberfair website, we discovered our community's beautiful wetland, the Yung Ho Community University Eco-park. We've got to know the volunteers who quietly help out there, unselfishly working to protect the environment. We've also gained a deeper understanding of ecological conservation.

By working as junior guides at the wetland, we've realized that being a guide is not at all easy and so everyone should respect all the volunteers who guide people around the park. Throughout this time, we've all enjoyed ourselves a lot, and we've learned that development isn't the only thing that is good for people. We've discovered that building a wetland park doesn't just require money or manpower, but it needs passionate people to join in. The most important thing is to continue to care about conservation and we hope that people can learn through this website how important wetlands are to our lives.