BY LYNTON AARON FILIA
TAIWAN’S Youth Ambassadors have touched the hearts of children with special needs in presentation of gifts and cultural performances on Friday last week.
It was a great opportunity and life memory for children with disability of the Special Development Centre of the Red Cross Solomon Islands to mingle and interact with Taiwan’s Youth Ambassadors.
Children with special needs were gifted with exercise books and pencil each as donations from the Youth Ambassadors of the Republic of China (Taiwan) as part of the cultural exchange programme.
The Taiwan youths put on an extraordinary performance to the children giving them a glimpse of Taiwan through dancing, music and arts.
The impressive performance is the nose flute, a traditional music practised by the Paiwan tribe – one of the 16 tribes in Taiwan.
Principal for Special Development Centre Mr Jiope Iputu said the visit of Taiwan Youth Ambassadors to the centre is important for the children to learn the cultures of other people or countries.
He said the coming of the Taiwanese youths will improve the learning abilities of children in terms of culture and offer opportunity as well for the Taiwanese to learn from Solomon Islands’ culture.
“Today is a good for children because they learn from Taiwan culture, as we know, Taiwan is a good friend of Solomon and they need to expose too on how people do things about their culture,” he said.
He said one area children lucking is interacting, and such visits has open great opportunity for children to interact and mingle because many time they were confine on certain areas.
Director General on Home Assignment Department of International Corporation and Economic Affairs Mr David WT Chang said their purpose of the visits is to strengthen the cordial relationship between Solomon Islands and Taiwan which was established since 1983.
As part of that, he said cultural exchange is one component they visited Solomon Islands and choosing children with special needs in Solomon Islands is part of the cultural exchange programme.
However, the visiting friends from Taiwan will depart to Thailand today for another cultural exchange programme.
Meanwhile, Special Development Centre has enrolled 115 students this year with 13 teachers.
Programmes they undertake includes maths and English and live skills learning.
70 percent of the students are impairment ranging from physical and intellectual.
The centre is 41 years old this year; the 40th anniversary was celebrated last year.
