VIA Taiwan Alumni Committee (TAC) Annual Event

Outgoing TAC president and American Language and Culture program alumna, Viola Lee, shares below the most touching experience she has had during her more than yearlong TAC presidency.

Good food set a great tone

On the day of the Taiwan Alumni Committee (TAC) reunion our members, who call themselves TACers, witnessed the vigor and energy of the VIA alumni community.

VIA Senior Stanford Programs Director Kazutoh presented

Thanks to reunion organizers Janie Tsai (2009 ALC) and Tim Hsu (2010 ALC), the event made a creative and unique impression on TACers this year. At first, we invited Kazutoh Ishida, the senior director of VIA and professor Hsiou-wei Lin to say a few words to welcome the alumni. All TACers seemed so delighted and concentrated at that time due to meeting our “good friends in common”.

Chia-wang Yeh's presentation

This year, we also had some outstanding alumni to share their life experience with us. Chia-wang Yeh (1998 ALC) showed his spectacular building structures he designed after pursuing a master’s degree at Stanford. Everyone was stunned and excited to see Chia-wang’s gorgeous creations. Howard Chang (1998 ALC), who joined the ALC program with Chia-wang, also shared his philosophy of success with TACers with his gentle tone and modest attitude.

Howard (left) and Kazuharu (right) shared experiences

Additionally, we had Sunny Lin (2005 ALC) share her ideas and experience of social enterprise in Taiwan. The inspiring talk from Sunny intrigued passions of our alumni and encouraged them to learn more about the potential industry. Echoing Sunny’s enthusiasm of social work, our special guest, Kazuharu Omata (2007 SAC participant and Asia coordinator for 2008 SAC, 2011 AUSL, 2012 ESI) from Japan, shared about the new social enterprise WINGLE in Japan. The wonderful sharing won him a big applause from all the participants.

Through an icebreaker activity, everyone worked so hard finding the specific person described on the sheets of paper they received. Through this interesting game, all participants were able to know more about their old friends and also got a special chance to interact with new ones.

As the president of TAC, I felt it was the most touching moment for me in TAC. Although there are difficulties to conquer when preparing activities for our alumni, I felt more thankful that lots of TACers could manage to come join the annual celebration. With laughter in the air all day long, we all tasted the sweet fruits of gaining a long-lasting friendship and were about to create more memories belonging to all of us.