President Tsai Ing-wen presented the 2016 President’s Education Awards Aug. 2 in Taipei City, praising the 56 student recipients and singling out 12 for special mention in light of their status as children of new immigrants mainly from Southeast Asia.
“You’ve shown the perseverance inherited from your parents,” Tsai said during her address at the ceremony. “I believe your generation’s efforts will help shape a new-look Taiwan.”
According to the president, past and present recipients come from different backgrounds and boast vastly different experiences. “But they share one thing in common: an ambition to strive to be the best,” she said.
Announced May 18 by the Ministry of Education, this year’s recipients were selected from 315 candidates recommended by schools and nongovernmental organizations around Taiwan.
Among the winners are Lin Bing-cheng from Far East University and Ye Xin-yi from Ching Shan Elementary School, both in southern Taiwan’s Tainan City, and Yang Min-jia from Gang Xi Elementary School in northern Taiwan’s Keelung City. With their mothers coming from the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia respectively, the trio was recognized for invaluable contributions to helping their families overcome day-to-day challenges, as well as outstanding achievements in academic and other fields.
Established in 2001, the awards recognize the accomplishments of students in positively facing life challenges and developing moral virtues or demonstrating competence in such areas as the arts, language, science, sport and vocational skills. They are divided into the categories of colleges and universities, senior and vocational high schools, junior high schools, and elementary schools. Each recipient collects a scholarship of NT$150,000 (US$4,733) to NT$250,000.
Many children from new immigrant families in Taiwan face greater hardships than other students, an official from the National Immigration Agency under the Ministry of the Interior said, citing such factors as discrimination and cultural and linguistic differences.
“Recipients of the President’s Education Awards from new immigrant families are role models for all students and serve as an inspiration for other young people with similar backgrounds.”
The NIA is responsible for drafting immigration policies, coordinating their implementation and providing assistances to new immigrant families. It was upgraded in January 2007 from the Bureau of Immigration, an agency formerly supervised by the National Police Administration under the MOI.
According to the latest MOE statistics, a total of 123,086 students at elementary and junior high schools in Taiwan proper and its outlying islands had parents from Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, the Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar and Malaysia, in order of pupil numbers, during the 2015 academic year. This represents 6.2 percent of the national total, and is up from 118,773 in 2011.
These students are considered by the government to be a significant talent pool and key to the successful implementation of Tsai’s New Southbound Policy. The policy seeks to elevate the scope and diversity of Taiwan’s export economy and minimize overreliance on any single market. In addition to Southeast Asia, it extends to six South Asian countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and encompasses inbound investment and tourism, as well as educational and cultural exchanges. (KTJ-E)
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