Building and fixing classrooms: TSMC’s guided reading with 1000 rural children

For TSMC volunteers, it is a long journey to take the high speed rail from Hsinchu to Taipei, take the train to Hualien, and finally drive a rental car into the mountain. Despite having to face the possibility of tickets selling out during their journey back home, the issue has never stopped the TSMC volunteers from putting in efforts in rural education. Established in 2004, the TSMC guided reading volunteer group has been keeping children company after school by doing guided reading with them. TSMC Charity Foundation has also poured in money and labor to improve rural education since 2004.

Typhoon Soudelor has destroyed the after-school iron sheet classroom of 400 children in Hualien’s Sioulin Township. The TSMC volunteers made use of their expertise and did assessments, raised donations from 607 colleagues in a fundraising campaign, and completed the new classroom within 3 months’ time. Regardless of the distance, they have been making round trips to Hualien during weekends to be the children’s “teachers.” “By keeping one child company, we could keep them from going astray, so it makes every trip to Hualien worth every minute, “they said.