You may have noticed an increase in the number of Southeast Asians on Taiwan’s streets. Most have come to Taiwan to work, balancing their hopes against the burdens of living abroad, and seeking to make better lives for themselves.

Kevin Chen and Sophia Wu decided to help Taiwan’s migrant workers achieve their goals, establishing a non-profit organization called One-Forty dedicated to that end. Their NPO has since launched a business school intended to help these workers make their dreams a reality, and has planned events such as “Southeast Asian Sundays” aimed at making them feel more at home in Taiwan.

 

Vivi, a migrant worker in her thirties, appears in a film that the non-profit One-Forty shot for its students. Holding a picture she has drawn of her dream shop, she smiles brightly and says, “I want to open a clothing store.” Su­pi­anto, a worker from Indonesia, dreams of opening a juice stand, while Ahtang from Thailand wants to build a house. There are many other Southeast-Asian migrant workers in Taiwan just like them, hoping to save enough money to start a business back home.

After hearing these workers describe their hidden dreams, Kevin Chen and Sophia Wu, a young Taiwanese couple in their twenties, wanted to see if they could help bring them to life. In late 2014 Chen, a graduate of the Department of Business Administration at National Cheng­chi University, decided to found One-Forty and to set up a “migrant worker business school.” Wu, a graduate of the College of Management at National Taiwan University, began helping out a few months later.

Beginning with friends

At the time they started planning, the two had had little personal experience with Southeast Asia. In fact, Wu had had no contact with Southeast-Asian cultures prior to joining One-Forty. Chen had toured the region with his parents when he was a boy, and had visited the Philippines once after his graduation from university, but had no other direct experience.

Chen loved traveling and had been deeply moved by the hospitality he experienced in the Philippines. Having a job limited his ability to visit other countries, “But I could still connect to Southeast Asia through migrant-worker friends.”

Hoping to learn more, in the summer of 2014 Chen visited ­Chang ­Cheng, founder of the Southeast-Asian-themed bookstore Brilliant Time, and several NGOs working on Southeast-Asian issues, including the Taiwan International Workers Association. He also worked as a volunteer at the first Taiwan Literature Award for Migrants, helped out on the Public Television Service’s Singing in Taiwan, and raised money for ­Chang’s bookshop.

One-Forty founders Kevin Chen (left) and Sophie Wu (right) offer free business classes to migrant workers with an eye to helping them start their own business when they return home. (photo by Jimmy Lin)

At the outset, Chen simply helped those around him. When he later moved onto the front lines by teaching Mandarin at TIWA, he developed a deeper understanding of the issues. When he asked his students to share their dreams with their classmates, he discovered that many hoped to open a business in their hometown someday.

Chen reflected on his own business training and wondered if he might make more of a contribution by sharing it than by teaching Mandarin. With that in mind, he began planning a business school for migrant workers.    

In late 2014, Chen began attempting to recruit students for his new school from among the migrant workers who gather around the Taipei Railway Station on their days off, but immediately discovered a problem: few Taiwanese talk to Southeast-Asian workers unless they employ them. Consequently, the workers Chen approached at the station assumed he was trying to scam them.

Having hit a dead end, Chen asked his Mandarin students if they were interested, requested that friends pass information on to other migrant workers, and used TIWA and Brilliant Time as distribution platforms. The news that his “business school” provided migrant workers with free classes on starting their own businesses spread like wildfire through the migrant-worker community and resulted in numerous inquiries.

The school’s first course, which consisted of eight to ten classes over a three-month span, attracted 15 students from Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, as well as the enthusiastic participation of Taiwanese volunteers from the banking and cultural sectors.

Learning through games

Chen didn’t want to use the program’s first class, held in July 2015, to dive straight into serious business-related material. Instead, he asked Wu to design a “life map” class, then used a drawing game to encourage students to sketch out the major events of their own lives.

Chen and Wu went on to use another game, built around the envelope system, to teach the students the cost control and financial planning concepts necessary to start and run a business. They had students practice asset allocation by dividing their monthly salary into five envelopes representing different goals. The two also traveled to Keelung to ask the socially involved Wa’s Up Studio to help them develop a Monopoly-style game that deals with more complex concepts such as setting up and opening a shop, and managing sales. Designed with the students’ limited Mandarin skills in mind, the game uses a variety of scenarios to help them grasp the ideas.

The course ran for three months, wrapping up in September with many of its objectives still unachieved. Under the original plan, Chen had hoped to have a few Taiwanese small businesspeople share their “tricks of the trade” for starting a new business or invite students to visit their shops, but time and manpower limitations prevented either from happening. Chen and Wu’s efforts to pass business know-how on to their students were also hampered by the students’ limited Mandarin, and the fact that, since as yet none of them has started a business back home, the entire curriculum was more theoretical than practical.

Time will tell whether the course helps students with the businesses they hope to start, but it certainly brought about a sea change in their outlooks. Wu says that migrant workers have little time for anything but work, and tend to spend their free time visiting with others from their homelands. Most of the business school’s students were also shy, lacking in self-confidence, and without many Taiwanese in their social circles.

When the school held a group meeting with students on September 20, 2015, to talk about what they’d gotten from the course, it found them more vibrant and upbeat than usual. For example, Yuuny, whom classmates had described as very bright but who had always been very cautious and quiet in class, opened up about herself.

Old magazines, Monopoly-style games and sticky notes are effective tools for teaching migrant workers about starting their own businesses.

On the day of the meeting, she spoke about leaving home in her teens and coming to Taiwan to work. Concerned that speaking openly about having changed employers four or five times might result in negative evaluations or otherwise affect her work, she had avoided mentioning it, but on this day she shared the whole story with her classmates.

Wu says that even though she and Chen were teachers to the 15 Indonesian, Vietnamese and Thai students on the course, the teaching went in both directions. She explains that she had just left her previous job when the course started, and was feeling a little bit adrift. As the course went on, she found a kind of redemption in her students’ stories about their own lives.

Some had been through tough times as children. Others had experienced family tragedies in their youth. Still others had found out as adults that the person they had thought of as their father was not their biological father. In spite of these soap-opera-like twists and turns, all had remained hopeful and had come to Taiwan seeking to make better lives for themselves.

Seeing the burdens that each bore, Wu remembered an activity she had come up with back when she was a student herself: inviting everyone to speak about their visions for the future. She decided to do the same thing again, but this time with the migrant workers. “Dreams are universal,” Wu argues. “Every­one has the right to pursue their dreams.”

Getting to know Southeast Asia

One-Forty is about to launch its 2016 programs, which will include an online version of its “migrant worker business school” course aimed at better accommodating migrant workers’ schedules, as well as eight to ten “Migrant for Migrant” classes on innovating in the face of challenges.

The curriculum of the latter will invite students to share the difficulties they face in their lives in Taiwan, from understanding traffic signs to communicating with their employers, then encourage the class to work together to come up with solutions.

Chen explains that migrant workers have typically had to rely on Taiwanese people to speak for them when facing intractable problems and situations. The class hopes to teach students to rely on themselves. “It’s about solving your problems for yourself.”

It also encourages migrant workers to stretch beyond their familiar social circles, interact more with Taiwanese society, and help themselves by putting their heads together to solve problems.

Curious about Southeast-Asian food, culture and religion? Have a chat with a migrant worker or visit a nearby shop. The rich bounty of Southeast Asia is right before your eyes.

As One-Forty finishes preparations on its 2016 courses, its cultural exchanges, which target some of the more than 600,000 migrant workers currently residing in Taiwan, are already underway. Chen notes that roughly one in every 40 people out on the street is either an immigrant or migrant worker, but few of them know more than a few Taiwanese, even after spending years of their lives here. One-Forty is therefore designing events such as “Southeast-Asian Sundays” and mini-tours to encourage migrant workers and Taiwanese to get to know each other better.

The group plans to hold monthly “Southeast-Asian Sundays” at which immigrants and migrant workers will be encouraged to share their stories and the culture of their homelands with Taiwanese. Meanwhile, students in the non-profit’s business school will lead mini-tours that will offer Taiwanese a glimpse of hidden corners of Tai­pei City filled with Southeast-Asian flavors. One-Forty plans to begin with places such as the “Indonesian street” and bits of Islamic culture located in the area around the Taipei Railway Station.

Wu argues that Taiwanese citizens’ view of the “international” tends to fixate on the US and Europe, forgetting about our neighbors in Southeast Asia. “Taiwan’s migrant workers offer us a great opportunity to learn more about the international community.”