1. Description of Our Community

The founder of Red on Tree, Che-hao Lin, was born and grown up in Taipei. He received education in this city and started a business of his own when he was a junior at college. He aimed to choose high-quality domestic fruits, and hoped to increase the value of Taiwan fruit by making processed products. Red on Tree began with a stall in a downtown farmers’ market in 2008. This market at that time was an experimental plan dedicated for small farmers to face urban consumers directly. Later on, “Red on Tree” was noted by big shooping malls and was shown on the shelves at many gourmet markets inTaipei.

2. Summary of Our Project:

Red on Tree has a wide range of products that comprise fruits in four seasons. This project aims to promote the concepts regarding toxin-free farming and food safety. Hence we formulated research objectives as follows:

1. To understand the brand spirit of Red on Tree by exploring the founder’s philosophy and the growing process of his company
2. To gain in-depth understading about Red on Tree’s product-making process and material source
3. To visit the orchards and small farms around Taiwan
4. To explore the development of toxin-free and organic farming in Taiwan
5. To visit institutions of research and inspection to study issues about food safety and food industry
6. To promote Taiwan’s agricultural products and modern concepts of food industry
7. To help public to make good judgments when buying food

3. Our Web Environment and Internet Access

The I.T. classrooms of our school: Every computer in our I.T. classrooms has access to Taipei City Educational Portal Site. We make good use of it during our after-lunch breaks and after-school time.

The Web environment of the team members’ households: ADSL or Wi-Fi wireless Service.

How to process data or information: With the Web storage and flash drives, we are able to process data in school and at home.

4. Obstacles We Had To Overcome

1) Playing the role as journalists

We have made interviews with many government officials, college professors, business owners, school lunch committee members and farmers. We had made thorough preparations before every interview, yet were still worried about our lack of knowledge in the industry. Meanwhile a lot of bad news about food-safety broke out within months, and we had to modify our questions for the upcoming interview over and over again. With our teachers’ guidance, we gradually got confidence facing this challenge. To our delight and satisfaction, our interviewees were all very friendly and eloquent, which made these interviews smooth and thus made big contribution to  our project .

2) Preparing for the charity bazaar at school carnival

The preparation for the charity bazaar at school carnival has been a complicated process, which includes setting up booths at the carnival, discussing about the items for sale, booth decoration, and deciding on which organization we would donate the money.

The most difficult part lied on what kind of items we would be putting on sale. We really wanted to earn more money to help the farmers, yet the preservation time of fruit lasted shorter than what we’d imagined, not to mention transportation and stock problems. All this posed great challenge for inexperienced workers like us. Thanks to the great help from our parents, we have finally managed to make a success of the charity bazaar.

3) Learning to manage time well

Fuhsing is a school that encourages all kinds of activity. All of us have to put a lot of efforts to school’s music or sport clubs aside from academic studies. We have got a busy life already. To be engaged in this project, time management becomes even more important for us. Making interviews and planning other activities have taken longer than a year, and we have become junior high school students this year. It is a well-learned lesson for us all, helping us to make effective arrangements within our time constraints.

4) Developing IT knowledge and skills

After our previous cyberfair project, our team members had acquired basic skills at nEO iMaging, Flash, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver. We gathered once again for this project and found ourselves doing much better at Dreamweaver and Flash this time. After finishing this project, we can’t wait to create another webpage on our own!

5) Recording background music

Before making background music, we thought it might be very easy to put the wind band and string band members together to play a song. After some practice, we found out that instrumental harmony was not that easy to achieve. Then we asked our music teacher for advice, and she soon taught us how to make harmonious rhymes. It took us quite some time to practice. The background music titled “Happy Farm Life” was finnally finished.

6) Thinking carefully about interview questions

Asking good questions shows respect for interviewees, yet to ask good questions means we have to collect and read background materials and realize what happens in the real world. After serious study and discussion among team members, we were able to ask good questions in our interview and made good impressions on these interviewees.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

Mr. Lin have set a good example in his effort to pursue his dream. Building the highest standard for Taiwan’s food industry and promoting Taiwan fruit is his ultimate goal. We believe Red on Tree can make unique flavor of Taiwan and can represent the spirits of Taiwan.

We walked into the headquarters of “Red on Tree” and found the working environment a very clean and bright place. They spared no effort in choosing raw materials, washing, cooking and bottling. Also they made it a point of combining best flavors from fruits grown in different seasons. Mr. Lin brought us to orchards and showed us the efforts of fruit farmers. We were very impressed by the distinct flavors of guavas, figs, strawberries and star fruits and will never forget the sweetness of these toxin-free fruits. It is no easy task to grow healthy fruits: farmers have to use bamboo shells and sugarcane peels to pave the trail of the orchard, which offers nutrition for fruit. They also spend money on constructing an indoor netting room to prevent natural calamities and insect attacks. Without their effort, we could not have a variety of delicious and safe fruits all year round.

Food safety crises exposed a brutal truth: Taiwanese enterprises would forgo conscience to pursue better profits. A good firm has to be led by a conscientious leader, just like Mr. Lin, founder of “Red on Tree”. He told us that “I decided to start a happy business for myself as well as for other people in Taiwan. It is an enterprise that embraces ideals, passion, insistence and positive energy.”