A dream that bloomed, that produced fruits, that started, with just, one thought, from the Front Page Sections, translated…
At the end of 2011 the manager of the UDN Photography Center, Lin asked to meet up with the not-for-profit platform’s C.E.O., Tsai. Lin took out an ink pen, said, this old pen had accompanied me through much, even as the computer age came, the pen was still, irreplaceable; now, the cell phones, the digital cameras are replaced too quickly by the users, there are, actually, a ton of great functioning digital cameras, and yet, they’re all kept, inside the desk drawers now.
Lin said, he’d wanted to head to the distant regions in Taidong to teach the children about photography, but it’s hard for him to work at it alone; that perhaps, with the help from the not-for-profit platforms, they could, make it happen, with the platform’s helping to get the secondhand digital cameras in by donations, he would then, used the weekends, to get them to the distant areas, to teach the kids to learn to document their own lives with it.
And so, there’s, the “Donate Your Used Camera”. Tsai originally wasn’t holding his breaths, and only set his goals at getting fifty preowned cameras, but, in just six months’ time, he’d, received 4,000 donated in, eighty times his original goals!
This plan that got started by Lin who’d planned to bring the arts and culture to the children in the lesser regions became, a movement on its own; Lin started as a lecturer, trained fifty, to sixty photography volunteers, and started teaching the children in 107 schools in the Hualien, Taidong areas to take pictures. The group is, also very grateful to all the volunteer moms, to help with the transportation of the cameras, and helping to get the donated cameras into topnotch conditions.
In September of 2015, the children had finally achieved something, the not-for-profit platform printed the book, “Another Set of Eyes of the Children—Getting Photography into the Schools Plan”, hoping more schools and foundations can take from the prototype, to help children learn to document their own, childhood moments.
photography lessons for young children…
The first that answered to the calls was, the second, the fifth chip factory of TSMC, and the Yu-Yuan Education Foundation, they’d sent the trained volunteers to help the children in Changwha and Hsinchu learn photography. Through the work of the volunteers, the school teachers, the photography courses helped the kids learn to think independently, they’re better able, to observe the world, it’d, initiated that imagination, that creativity in them.
In taking the pictures, the children learned to observe, to focus their minds, and to interact with others around them. As the confidence level builds up, they’d started, becoming more active in their classes, instead of their old ways of just, sitting and listening. And because of this, the not-for-profit organization had, switched the four photography courses, into a whole year’s worth of sessions, to help the children have a more systematic way of learning.
The plan started, branching out, from the Hualien-Taidong regions, all the way up to the Hsinbei areas, there are, more and more not-for-profit organizations who got onboard with the programs too. In September of 2019, the plan was handed off to the Wen-Yeh Foundation to sponsor, and, the foundation will provide the services for the next three years to the schools in Hsinbei, and Yilan to twelve schools, to continue this project of love, of hope.
And so, this man only, planted down this seed, and it’d, grown up, started, blooming all over the island, and, it’s, this thought that ignited the drive to help bring the aesthetic studies to children who aren’t normally, able to get, exposed, because of their lesser backgrounds, and this is a good legacy that this man had started, and it will, continue, for a very long time.