I think Chairman Fang is a wise and visionary person.  He managed the platform’s software which is his specialization.  I manage the content.  Together we can create extra value.  That’s why I joined the Junyi team.
      Chairman Fang was satisfied with my on-line videos and reached out to me.  We worked together on some items.  He endorsed my ability and attitude and subsequently let me take over the team.

      Firstly, I have to do my own part of the job well.  Make it a standing model and shed light on it.  Let others see the concrete stuff so that they can be part of it.  Secondly, we must get out in front.  Make sure it is visible to other people.
      I started to narrow down those capable persons who have a sense of calling from a list of my acquaintances.  During that time, we were not well-aware by the public and we have to actively invite people to join up.  If their response is negative, I would ask them for two recommendations.  Our target candidates generally know people with similar capabilities and vision.  Such recommendation would help us in reaching out to the right team member.

     Junyi Academy spends about TWD 30 million every year.  How is it funded?  Junyi runs on donations.  Junyi wants to adopt a pure charity based approach and to avoid commercialization.  That way, we can think straight without having second thought.  Once Junyi wants to generate profit, the target audiences would be skewed away from the rural population and underprivileged.  There are 3 groups of targets for fund-raising.  The first group includes the directors of the foundation.  They make top-level decisions for the foundation.  Secondly, enterprises.  They make donation to charitable organization every year and obtain tax cut from the government.  As long as we are more effective in utilizing the money than the government, enterprises will provide us with funding.  The final group is the general public.  There are of course other organizations that absorb public donations including Taiwan fund for Children and Families, Eden Social Welfare Foundation.  Junyi receives some donation from a different part of the general public including lawyers, doctors, engineers, teachers, accountants etc. who may consider education exceptionally important.  Our funds come from donation completely.
      It is difficult for non-profit organization to maintain ample amount of funds.  In case one such organization keeps a bigger wallet than its objectives, it would means the organization is on a downhill path. If we do not have a need for larger amount money, we would not have asked the society or enterprises for support.  That is why we constantly in a barely just-made position as far as money is concerned.  In other words, it is very likely that our team members would get larger pay cheques once they seek other opportunities elsewhere.  In this perspective, one can say that Junyi is never going to have enough money. 

      That is actually a common scenario.  Take a learning platform in mainland china as an example.  There are 300 million registrations whereas the number of active accounts is about 20 million only, i.e. less than 10%.  In Junyi’s case, there are about 200 thousand active accounts every month.  The active account percentage is over 10% which means we are not doing bad.  Junyi definitely has the potential to attain better metrics.  On the other side of the coin, Junyi’s numbers are pretty normal.

       That is normal.  Only a few percent of human are very strong self-starters.  I am not saying that human cannot be self-starter.  Self-learning requires fostering.  That is why we have conventional education.  We cannot totally rely on machine to foster learning, we need human guidance too.  Teachers are there to foster learning.  A good on-line platform alone does not suffice.  That is why Junyi has a marketing team which is set to communicate with teachers about how the two work together to guide children.  In the future, interaction may be primarily between human and AI machines, but human cannot be replaced.  Junyi has never planned to solve all the problems in education on its own.

        It doesn’t matter whether they are Bunun children in Taitung county, children in the military dependents’ villages in Yunlin, or children raised by grandparents in the villages in previous Tainan county, they are very similar to you in terms of natural endowments and capabilities.  The major difference is that they may not have stable families and stable teachers in schools.  They may have 6 teachers from Grade 1 to 6.  You probably do not have the same first-hand experience.
       What we put “weakness” is actually weakness in learning.  The children in rural areas are not necessarily weak.  I’ve met some children who live in rural areas who read junior high school materials when they were at Grade 5.  They chose to learn by themselves.  In those areas where education resources are limited, helping the weak ones are top of the list.  However, we cannot rely only on the platform.  We have to align with teachers and supplementary class and even other units.  We have to align as many grownups who are there to support the children as possible.
        The methods for the underprivileged, gifted and regular seem different, but we put it as the same one in Junyi namely, “aptitude oriented teaching”.  When I meet with a pupil, I would use a style that fits with him or her in the interaction.  I called that personalized learning.
        Where is the best location for applying this?  It would be those areas where resources are limited because the people would love to see new methods.  In my opinion, it is just about identifying and applying the best mean for interacting with each individual no matter he or she is an underprivileged, gifted or regular.  Junyi wants to work with teachers to personalize learning for each child regardless of his or her position on the spectrum.

       I believe there is quality education in Taiwan, but we need something even better.  There is an examination called PISA where teenagers around 15-year old from 70 to 80 countries sit for.  Taiwan children have been getting very good results all these years. At least the top 5.  This shows that the quality of education in Taiwan is pretty good.  We need you agile not just your good grades.  Examination is just part of learning but not all of it.  When we manage to stuff a lot of knowledge in the brain, we also have to leave space for doing something creative?  How do we do it?  Think!  That is where education in Taiwan is steering to.

      In simple terms, there are 3 parts in the conversion.  The first one is to create a platform that allows video uploading.  It was on our platform instead of Khan Academy’s platform.  Secondly, chinese language support.  The third part is localization which is different from chinese language support.  The latter is translation of the content.  Localization is different, e.g. the syllabus for mathematic in Taiwan and US are different.  We have to work with partners in Taiwan who provide us with local videos.
        Singapore is an elite nation.  Their school syllabus for science and mathematics are ahead of ours by two years which means their Grade 4 pupils learn those things our children do in Grade 6. And then we have the 108 syllabus.  Our junior high school students have to be able to write programs instead of just using programs. Pupils in Singapore start learning Python in primary school years.  In simple terms, education in Singapore is very elite-oriented.  If one doesn’t stay on the mainstream, he would be filtered and put on the route to vocational training.  That is the system in Singapore. There used to be a similar education system in Taiwan. 
         Finland has a multivalue education system.  Multivalue denotes the belief that the future world is not linear but in mesh structure.  One has to see things in multiple angles.  The Finnish people believe that the future needs theme and phenomenon.  A student has to be able to start a thought train from a theme or a phenomenon.  Their syllabus is twin-axial.  They have problem based enquiry learning and project-based learning instead of lecture based classes.  In US, they think staying healthy is good for discovering one’s interests.  There are a lot of AP classes. If you are good, you can study college materials in high school.  That way, you get to exempt a lot of modules and do a double major or even a triple major and graduate early.  I was told that a lot of good software engineers hold double major degrees or triple major degrees.  You can find a good dancer who is a software engineer.  A person with a strong sense of aesthetics is possibly a mathematician.  That is a common scenario in US.  Among the nations that I’ve mentioned, Singapore is very strongly examination-oriented.  Finland embraces multivalue.  In US, once teenager manages to identify his knowledge path, he gets on a highway to college and further study.

       Mr Lu suggested us to ask ourselves the 3-M question continuously.  That way, one can correctly establish his values.  We also learned his attitude towards learning, managing companies and charitable organizations.  Those are invaluable experience.  Pursuing knowledge is for oneself, but we just cannot stand the temptation.  We are still young and should learn the right attitude.  Just like what Mr Lu has told us, the 3Ms will come up.