Nowadays student service clubs are indispensable on college and university campuses as long as there are any clubs in a school. People served by these clubs are various: mountain people, fishing villages, farmers, handicapped people and broken families. But in recent years the clubs have received much criticism and reproach. In fact. In spite of some systematic defects, they have performed many services for lots of disadvantaged and remote communities throughout Taiwan.
Every summer and winter vacation the clubs send ten to twenty members to one local place (all the costs are paid by the members themselves— one to two thousand N.T. dollars at one time). The students make home visits to understand the problems confronting the local people. The common problems are: (a) they still have very conservative ideas about children's education or youngsters' marriage or savings, (b) they lack a channel of communication with the government, and (c) some secluded paces don't even have street lamps yet; one can imagine how horrible it is to walk on the narrow dusty road at night. Their systematic drawbacks are a great hindrance to the service work. Because the members are all students, they can only go when there is no burden of study. The two visits in a year inevitably become a “seasonal disturbance” to those poor people. Owing to the restriction of study, one member maybe will have only one or two chances and the local people have to get acquainted with “new friends” every vacation without knowing why. So, the service work is forced to start at the same point every year with no improvement, another serious problem is that some members are ill trained. They not only can't help others but also can't help themselves: that is to say. The sometimes are too conceited to learn anything, including self growth. Sometimes they become tourists—not doing service, but taking pictures, appreciating scenery.
Perhaps the criticism is right, students don't have the qualification to "help" other people. But, at least, they've brought much new information into the remote counties and given the closed communities much stimulation as well as the opportunity of introspection. Maybe one doesn't believe all this, but there is one thing which can't be denied: friendship, yes, friendship. These two groups of people no longer belong to two different worlds. the most important thing is that the people served know city people, care about them.
