Month: March 2017

My takeaway from the guest speakers of last class was that non-profit organization can have many different objective and initiative. Before the class all I could think about the for non-profit was to try to eradicate poverty, hunger, or advocating for sustainability. (Well technically, CRIS’s objective does fall under trying to fix the issue of poverty by helping the refugees and immigrants to be economically self-sufficient). Since both speakers came from trying to fix the social issue. The objective is a different from UNPO organization I found from Through the Lens writing, the only similarity the organizations have is to serve the humanity. After doing both the political action assignment and the non-profit assignment. I think the best way for me to approach the issue is to combine both lens together, with a little more focus on political action than non-profit since my issue is a political issue. A rough idea for the potential action are as follow: write letters to US government officials to voice my concerns (political action). Talking to people to try to “educate” or spread awareness of Taiwan political status issue (neither non-profit nor political action, but more of citizen duty). Trying to get involve with UNPO regarding Taiwan’s issue, but it will be a stretch because they currently do not need any volunteering or internship (non-profit). And lastly, trying to get involve with on-campus club organizations that are relates to Taiwan (a somewhat non-profit action). Details are to follow with a more specific plan of action for my issue.

With the earth month approaching, I have organized the following four actions for each week to complete.

 

Week 1:

The first week I had plan to talk to people about their awareness of the Taiwan political status. If people does not know anything about that issue, then I will be the lecturing them about the issue, from the end of Chinese civil war in 1949 to current time. I will also bring up some key events that are important because some events, including the three Taiwan Strait crises, the diplomatic turnover between PRC and ROC, and the UN General Assembly Resolution 2758. The primary goal is for people to be aware of the current issue that is still ongoing, and if I can, make people feel sympathize for Taiwan’s situation. The difficult part of this action is to stay bias free and stay calm and patience when people do disagree with me.

 

Week 2:

My actions for second week will be attending clubs like Taiwanese student association in OSU or Taiwanese American Association in OSU. The goal for such action is to stay up top of news in Asia Pacific, and reconfirmed the history and current events I talked to people about from week 1 are correct. The tough part about this action is to find a time from my already busy schedule to attend the club meetings.

 

Week 3:

For my third action, I will try to get involve with UNPO (Unrepresented Nations And Peoples Organization). I know they currently do not have any volunteer or internships offers. But if I can write a letter for them to update the page about Taiwan’s status, that will give the public viewer a more current, ongoing issue. The difficult part of this action is to reach out and stay connect to the organization effectively.

 

Week 4:

The final week of my action plan is to write letters to US legislator branch and/or State Department to urge them to not ignore the overall events that escalating tension in East Asia in general (The heighten tension between S. Korea and PRC because of THAAD, South China sea issue, the growing gap between PRC and Taiwan’s military… etc.)  All these situations threaten or potential threaten the current stability in Asia Pacific. In the letters, I will especially stress the strategic importance of Taiwan to the U.S. and to persuade the US to approve more arm sale to Taiwan for the island to defend itself. The difficult part of this action is to pick which senators or congressmen to write who are traditionally side with Taiwan.

I searched for all the non-profit organization regarding Taiwan’s political status for this assignment. I have found one that could be qualify as a non-profit: Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO). UNPO is an international, nonviolent, and democratic membership organization, consists of people who are indigenous, minorities, unrecognized or occupied territories. Its goal is to protect and promote their human and culture rights, preserve environments, and find nonviolent solutions to conflicts that affect those people.

 

UNPO has established a sub branch call Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD) to represent and voice Taiwan’s status since 2006. One interesting thing to point out about TFD is that although TFD is now a non-profit under UNPO, but back when TFD was found under Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affair (equivalent to US’s Department of State), it was an afflicted political entity.

 

I found a section that give the viewers a general introduction of the island of Taiwan, including its political structure, past histories under different ruling entity, and its current challenges. From the page, I found where UNPO stands at in terms of Taiwan political status. Base on the idea of UNPO, it is not surprised to see that UNPO think Taiwan should be recognized as an independent, should also be allow to fully participate in the United Nations. UNPO condemns all actions PRC take that threatens Taiwan’s political identity, and commends Taiwan’s democratization efforts for the Asia-Pacific region, and welcomes any peaceful resolution to resolve the issue.

 

From going through UNPO’s website, I realized that the action that UNPO takes has no enforcing authority, all it can really do is to voice out their opinion to the public. Which mean for my issue specifically, not to sound harsh, but has no real impact to the issue. In other words, since my issue is based on the conflicts of interest between the government of Taiwan and PRC, that means the issue is strictly political, therefore both government can simply ignore UNPO’s comments and opinions. Which effectively, renders UNPO’s action “useless”.

 

To get involve with UNPO, it will require me to be an intern or volunteer for UNPO. The challenges that exist is that UNPO is looking for intern who is major in international relations, political science, international law or development of political geography, none of the major overlaps with my aviation engineering major. Furthermore, as of right now, no internship nor volunteer position is being offer.

 

For the Ted talk video, I cannot find any video that has to do with non-profit regarding Taiwan’s political status.