Taiwan Foreign Alumni Network Established to Link Alumni Staying in Taiwan
Organized by the Ministry of Education (MOE), the inaugural ceremony of Taiwan Foreign Alumni Network (TWN-FAN) was held on January 5, 2021, with nearly 100 foreign alumni from more than 10 countries attending. After completing their studies, overseas Chinese and foreign alumni stayed in Taiwan to find work, start a business, and settle down, giving full play to their expertise in each professional field.
According to statistics, the number of foreign students that came to study in Taiwan exceeded 785,000 from 2007 to 2019, and the number of overseas Chinese and foreign alumni who stayed in Taiwan after graduation has surpassed 20,000 in the past eight years. Political Deputy Minister of Education Mon-Chi Lio pointed out at the ceremony that our government attaches great importance to cultivating, retaining, and attracting talents, and the MOE has been promoting many international talent cultivation programs to create a friendly environment for foreign students. Familiar with the social environment, language and culture of both their home country and Taiwan, foreign alumni who stay in Taiwan after graduation act as indispensable bridges for international exchange. Many alumni associations were also established in schools for various countries. To enhance the lateral exchanges and to facilitate participation, the MOE has further organized the TWN-FAN, the first and only foreign alumni organization that is inter-school and cross-nationality in Taiwan, hoping to build a platform for experience exchange, resource sharing, and fellowship building. Representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Overseas Community Affairs Council, the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Labor, and other related ministries also attended the ceremony to celebrate the establishment of the alumni network, and the atmosphere was warm and lively.
The Preparatory Committee of Taiwan Foreign Alumni Network was chaired by Sam Choi Li, an alumnus from Hong Kong. Li led many other outstanding alumni in various professional fields to jointly plan for the TWN-FAN under the core spirit “Study in Taiwan, Work in Taiwan, and Live in Taiwan”. In the future, activities for education and culture promotion will be held to enhance the fellowship of the alumni and provide further contribution and services to the society.
The Ministry of Education values cultivation of international talents and the enhancement of alumni interactions; as a result, the "Taiwan Alumni Database (TAD)" Program was launched in 2018 to contact overseas Chinese and foreign alumni and to track their career development after graduation. TAD sends English E-newsletters that provide information on job vacancies in Taiwan on a regular basis and arranges exclusive employment lectures for foreign students to facilitate their career and life development in Taiwan after graduation, echoing the government’s policies on talents cultivation, attraction, retention, and placement.
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