To promote international exchanges, the Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) initiated the Six-Year Plan for the Austronesian Forum, using its plan strategies to launch the Austronesian Forum Cultivation Program of Young Talents for Career Competency. The program, held last year (2020) for the first time, was well-received among program students. This year, it was held at the Evergreen Laurel Hotel in Taichung from Nov. 21 to 24, where a total of 30 young adults from the Republic of Republic of Kiribati, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Republic of Nauru, Republic of Palau, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, New Zealand, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and Belize in Taiwan as well as indigenous Taiwanese college students were invited as participants. On Nov. 23, CIP Deputy Minister Afas Falah offered a speech to encourage the program participants.

        This year’s exchange activities featured rich and diversified content such as the “company visit and tribal experience activity.” For said activity, the participants visited the Taihaowan Cultural Enterprise Co., Ltd., an enterprise that received a one million subsidy from the CIP in the CIP’s sixth annual Entrepreneurial Coaching Project. Taihaowan Cultural Enterprise was founded by Buyong and Yiwan; Yiwan is an elementary school substitute teacher who grew up in a tribe and pursued her education outside of the tribe. After completing her education, she returned back to the tribe to teach at the elementary school. Dispirited about how young adults continue to leave their tribes to find work, she and her husband came up with a plan to urge young adults to return home to codesign activities that promote tribal tourism and create local employment opportunities.

        The CIP indicated that it hoped to, through interesting and well-planned courses and experiences, explore Austronesian and international indigenous peoples-related career and employment issues. For example, at the suggestion of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, it invited Chen Ming-zhu, the chief operating officer of Invest Taiwan and an expert in talent recruitment and industry economic investments, to give a lecture on transnational job market trends for Austronesian young adults; asked Masao Aki, assistant professor of the Department of Digital Media Art, Shih Hsin University and an individual well-versed in digital photography editing as well as indigenous cultural and creative industry design and marketing, to give a lecture on enhancing the future career competency of Austronesian young adults by using digital technology communication; and provided round-table forum exchanges for Austronesian young adults based on their industries of interest to enable them to be be well-informed about the core competency market trends of such industries, transforming them into young talents in future workplaces.