That is to say, they run efforts like Hidden Taipei that introduce the people to the homeless people and introduce the homeless people as the guides the tours to the streets they are very familiar with and open more doors to interactions to them.
It is still something that we are working on right now. Because we have countered the pandemic very successfully, the pandemic causing poverty, and causing homelessness, and causing isolation and so on, Taiwan is suffering a great deal less compared to any other countries.
Yeah. What I'm trying to say is that around the world in the past couple years, homelessness increased by around 20 percent or so because of the pandemic. This is a number that we are very aware of.
What I'm trying to say is that because Taiwan, for the last year, we are mostly COVID-free, and for this year there's been the single-digit local transmissions for more than a month now and we didn't have any COVID before May, a large portion of the last couple years was remarkably COVID-free.
Because of that, our ratio of homelessness did not increase that significantly compared to our international counterparts. It's not saying that we don't have homeless people.
Yes, that is correct.
Sorry, I didn't get the last part of the question. I heard you saying about what is the most important measure to be inclusive and leave no one behind. I didn't get a context before that. Can you ask again?
I see. For our homeless population of around 3,000 registered in Taiwan, a country of 23-or-so million people, there are two main things that we are doing to help. The first is to de-label these people.
Instead of calling them the homeless or so on, as I mentioned, there are many charities that flips this around and say that they are the street guides, for example, for the people who want to get to know more about the street.
When we hand out the stimulus vouchers, or reimbursements, or things like that, we make sure that they follow exactly the same way as the other parts of the citizen or population.
Their issuance of such stimulus budget and so on is done in a way that maximizes their privacy in a sense that they either write something like a postcard and put it to the PO box without having to queue in line, which is additional trouble, or they can also, if they have a bank account, receive directly into the bank account.
Even if they don't have a bank account, we make sure that this entire application process can take place through mail instead of through the face-to-face queuing mechanisms. Be more considerate and inclusive in designing the services that are used is very important to de-label them.
That is one of the most important thing. The other thing is also important is to build empathy, to make sure that the entire society including the students but also everyone to understand about their situations to be in their shoes so to speak, and to experience the kind of life that they have.
Once these empathies are made, then we can design more inclusive spaces. For example, around the main train stations and so on there could be sufficient amount of room instead of causing a conflict between the homeless people and the passengers. I hope that answers your question. Sorry. I didn't get the full question.
That's correct.
Yes. They can either apply online or if they don't have connectivity, then they can also print it themselves or from a social worker and fill in the details and drop it, no stamp required, into a post forum. Then the PO box has people who will type in their requests into the same online platform.
We do digital transformation in our service. It's about bringing technology to the people instead of asking people to adapt to technology.
We looked at the tax filing records. Because we have entirely digitalized the tax filing records, we can very easily. Everyone in Taiwan has a number like your My Number system. Using the number, we can easily see whether they have filed sufficient income tax.
If they had not or if they need to support a large household and things like that, then they qualify for the emergency budget immediately. We have an entire system of digitalizing the incoming postcards as well as the over-the-counter social worker that helped to hand out those forms but without them having to explain anything to those social workers and so on.
You never know whether they're collecting it for themself or collecting it for a friend. This is privacy-preserving.
I'm sorry?
Yeah, the new Taiwanese, yes. The smiles, I believe, are written in the characters of Japanese, English, Korean, French, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Filipino, Thai, Malay... I'm missing one... Mandarin, of course.
All of these are different languages are there to make sure that the new Taiwanese feel free, that they are being included in the spaces instead of just citizens. In Taiwan, the national healthcare protects all residents, not just citizens.
Even if they are what we call an illegal migrant worker who's visa have expired maybe long ago, we make sure that they can get, for example, free vaccination and with a complete protection against them being investigated or being deported. This is just, again, to make everyone feel that they are being included.
Of course, the concourse in the Taipei main station, many people especially people from the cultures where it feels more natural to sit on the ground often during the weekends bring some pillows or something and socialize on the ground.
But for cultures that did not get used to sitting on the ground, sometimes it makes a lot of tension seeing other people behaving this way, saying that they are blocking the way that we need to get to our trains and things like that.
The way we resolved that is not any top-down decree, but rather what we call a collaborative consultation meeting. We held, I think, two public conversations, public panels and another two NGO-moderated space scenario design workshops.
We agreed, as I mentioned, the common value that a public space need to be in public use and it needs public participation.
This participation then resulted in the common value of inviting people to sit with this symbolism with smile and everybody feels happy and included, because then, the space clearly demarks the places for sitting, but not the more on the margins where people do actually need to get to their trains. It's inclusive but also pragmatic.
I think it's implemented last July and the social response to that was very good.
Yes, that's exactly right. It's shaped like a chessboard. In the chessboard squares, these are the squares to sit like a shape of pillows, and in the margin of the chessboard are straight lines and thus suggest it's a place for walking quickly.
There's a saying saying there's nothing about us without us. Anything that concerns any group of people, any culture, need early participation from that culture. It's not on a one-on-one basis like a focus group only, but rather a deliberative space where everyone can hear about the real cultural differences but also common values of the other groups.
If we just run some surveys where people filling in the survey did not have the first-hand experience of sitting down or standing up and having a conversation with people from different cultures and different abilities, then it's very difficult to innovate. To innovate you first need to understand the real requirements of people.
This co-creation rests on the idea that we're working not for the people, we're working with the people. We hold ourself to implement whatever the people are comfortable with instead of saying, "Oh, we already have an idea, and the people are just here as our vendor, or BOT, just as procurement partners." No. It's earlier than procurement. It's on defining the values together.
Yes, that is entirely correct.
Yes, a safe space.
Certainly. Back when I was dropping out from the middle-high school when I was 15, my principal, head of my school, agreed only because she understand that the kind of research I want to do about building trust over the Internet and so on cannot be studied in the schools or in the universities at the time. It was such a very new field.
The worldwide web just started at the time. There's no existing literature to study. In order to research, I have to create, to make new spaces in order to observe how people interact. Having understood that, she said, "OK, you don't have to go to my school anymore and, because it's mandatory education, I will protect you by, essentially, faking the records of my attendance."
This is what I mean by a safe space. First, that my value, the research that I want to do, is affirmed by someone in the authority. Again, that someone from the authority then innovated on my behalf to think about ways to reconcile the values that I hold and the position that she was in.
Inspired by that and a few other homeschoolers around 1996, Taiwan would go on to implement the Asia's most liberal homeschooling laws, the three experimental education laws, so that up to 10 percent of students can choose to homeschool or join an alternative school group or institution. This then paves the way of education reform.
Then these safe spaces, some practicing the German Waldorf Schule, some practicing Montessori, many be different education provide safe spaces for students who don't fit in with the more traditional examination-based curriculum and want to explore autonomy-based, competence-based learning environments.
Afterward, we took what worked in the research community after 10 years and brought it into the institution and became, starting 2019, the new curriculum of basic education in Taiwan. This reform was done because we sought safe spaces where we can explore different ways to educate.
The safe spaces also meant not just isolating sanctuary. It's more like a lab where when we have the results, we're happy to share with the general society.
Yes. She helped me to convince my parents and so on.
Yes. My point was the safe space is not to close off people's possibilities but rather, like a lab environment, is meant to provide a safe space for innovations to grow. Once those innovations come out, then it's shared with the entire society.
Yes, freedom of expression and sharing experiences together instead of having to fight each other on a zero-sum fashion. People can, at their own tempo, experience more interaction with the world, with the society. When they feel less safe, there is a safe space for them to retreat a little bit into.
We're always working on that. For example, for people in wheelchairs, I believe Japan provides better universal access than Taiwan. Taiwan, we provide pretty good ones in the municipalities. We still need to work on the less-municipal places.
We're getting there, but not quite where Japan is. That's partly also because Japan is a more aging society than Taiwan. [laughs] We're getting there. For example, on the other side, for LGBTIQ non-binary people, then Taiwan provides a better safe space compared to Japan.
In Japan, even women's equality are still being fought for, let alone the LGBTIQ community. In Taiwan, a majority of our universities and my own office indeed provide the safe rooms for, for example, washrooms, restrooms. In my office, there's one for men, one for women, one for gender-neutral, and one for wheelchair-friendly. It provides safe space for people who experience any kind of gender expressions. There's no forced confrontation.
If you do not plan the building in such a way, then it can cause conflict between minority groups and other minority groups. Just like the concourse case, the space need to be designed with the safe space and interactions in mind. I wouldn't say that Taiwan is 100 percent good or even better than Japan. I would say we both have some better aspects compared to each other that we can learn from.
