After watching the conversation of Director Leng Bin and me, What do you think is the most significant spirit of promoting Youth Voicing Program? If you answer the question correctly, congratulation on your understanding of the spirit of protecting youth's subjectivity strategically. If you didn't get the right answer, don't be upset, let us try another one. Do you get this one right? Terrific! In the last two sessions of the class, I will lead all of you to learn together, Learning how to defend rights through advocacy, and what is advocacy? About the methods of advocacy, do you recall when we first talked about the ecosystem theory, and we mentioned the macro-system? The culture and the laws in a macro-system are the key factors to influencing one's behavior development. When an individual is surrounded by an unfriendly or barren environment, one usually has difficulty to make their own voices heard. Therefore, we need to find them a spokesperson, and yet, this is not the kind of spokesperson in the TV commercial. This kind of endorsement, we call it advocacy in the professional social-working field. Jobs like advocacy have made social work not only about helping others, and caring charity, it is also about the process of how we maintain justice. The so-called advocacy is to help those disempowered to fight for the right they deserved. And the scholars from non-profit organization usually use public interest or social justice to be the essence of advocacy, and use social policy as the main advocacy goal, which is base on the idea of social justice. Through planned actions, challenging the existing policy and advocating the new ones, it will result in the reallocation of social resources, in order to improve the situation of the disadvantaged groups. What about the ways to advocate? They usually include three major categories. They are case advocacy, policy advocacy, and legislative advocacy. The so-called case advocacy is about when institutions or the society no longer provide service for those in need, and thus we have to fight for the services they deserve. We must help them make their voice. What about policy advocacy? It is to lobby or fight for legislating relevant policies that are favorable to those disadvantages, for instance, we can rally to advocate against human trafficking. Or we can advocate gender equality, or advocate against racial discrimination etc. These are all policy advocacy. And what is legislative advocacy? Legislative advocacy is to fight for the legislation of the laws that favor the disadvantages. In order to legislate those laws, we need to make some lobbying and efforts. For instance, in Taiwan, we promote the concept of c"Child And youth Welfare and Rights Protection Act". During the process, we let everyone think from children and youths' protection to the maintenance of right. Among the groups that promote Youth's welfare in Taiwan, one of them is called Taiwan Alliance for Advancement of Youth Rights and Welfare. We call it Taiwan Alliance. And if we look at their name carefully, we can see that it is about rights(welfare) instead of rights. I want to clarify that, although we may call them both rights in English, in Taiwan society, it is more related to welfare, since we hope to safeguard the concept of rights and benefits at the same time. Hence, when I mentioned the Taiwan Alliance, I will use the word 'welfare', but the essence and spirit are the same as rights. And when did this institution founded in Taiwan, and why should it be established? This organization was established in June 2003, it was founded by another organization called The Garden of Hope Foundation. The Garden of Hope Foundation gathered 22 groups in the country that have been involved in the welfare of youth. Taiwan Alliance is founded by multiple organization and it is the first and the only non-governmental organization that advocates for the rights of youth. So far, in Taiwan, there are 35 members participating this organization. As for this organization, the original goal is very simple, Since under the development of Taiwan society, there are many groups helping children elders handicapped and women lobby and advocate strategically and legislatively for their rights, and yet the entire ignore the existence of the young people. If our civil society does not make enough effort on this issue, our government will certainly overlook the importance of promoting the welfare of youth, not to mention planning the laws for the youths' need as a whole. The organization has also found out that, the entire welfare budget in Taiwan Among budgeting, the expenditure for youth is in fact greatly marginalized. Without money, nothing can be done. Because of marginalized budget, youth welfare can only focus on a few special or marginalized youth for residual welfare. Empowerment is difficult to achieve with residual welfare, We cannot devote time and money to satisfy the needs of youth both physically and mentally. So this group is formed hoping through policies and lobbying to pay attention on youth rights and the maintenance of welfare indicators. Within the process, Taiwan Alliance proposed to uphold the of UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, They also go further to safeguard their physical and mental integrity Elucidating more clearly to the six rights and interests of the six rights includes: social participation, Cultural and leisure rights, healthy development rights, Welfare protection, labor (employment) protection, as well as the right to education, Apart from promoting these six major rights, we also supervise the enforcement of the youth welfare policies and the budget, Hoping to evoke the public to devote into the youth policy and investment of heterogeneous development. Just think back to the similar concept of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, In fact, it is not difficult to enforce the six powers. Do our society reach it? How much do all of us contribute to it? How much social environment contribute to youth welfare and right in nowadays social environment you live in? Is there enough opportunity to express their opinion which could be respected? In the previous class I have already told, Look at your environment, there is no chance for young people to relax, When youth finish the class, where should they go and where is safe and comfortable enough for them to go? Beside the media environment offering is apposite or not? When it comes to health, we will say superficially that young people are physically fit and don't have any health problems. The parochialism bridles our thinking, that health is not only refer to physical health, especially in increasingly convoluted environment, mental health is more considerable. Under the circumstance of Credentialism, do we hearken onto their mental health? When adolescent buy cigarette or betel nut, do all of us ask them to show credentials, or do all of us abstain from selling them those unlawful items? Why not find out the person who allow the youth to take the cigarette, when we censure that youth can get cigarette to smoke. In the same way, we should focus on who sell the alcohol when we reprove youth for drinking. Comparing with other age groups or other ethnic groups, how much the fee, that youth dispensed to, is? As a student who concerned about community, you can search for something related. How the government dispense their expenditure to Youth Welfare or even to maintenance for right in your country or in your region? Does every school welcome all kinds of student? Notwithstanding the students who have wrongdoing, interfere the class order or abhor school. what is the attitude toward to those student? There are much boss debase your salary for unlawful employment. And there are much boss deducting your salary for any reason, although those reason may seem untenable. I have hearkened one child to whine that half of his salary was deducted for broken a plate when he was working in the restaurant. Under such system, yet despite he do it deliberately, his salary was surreptitiously deducted. Eventually, how much salary matching to his effort he earn? In order to answer those question, we need to ascertain to maintain right. The vindication for right hardly depends on individuals by helping other with some simple tactic. The vindication for right should not emerge from meeting individual needs. By collaborating with each other, we ameliorate and enact related policy to maintain our right. Simultaneously, we should accept and invite the youth group, who involved in those policy. Focusing on study purely without disturbed by trivial things is no excuse for dismissing their right.
