🆕 I would like to share with you the good news: The 3rd Asia-Pacific Social Enterprise Summit will be held in Taoyuan in early May 2020. The organizer is Impact Hub Taipei, with authorization by the SME Agency, Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA).

🏡 The last two summits were held in Taichung and Kaohsiung respectively. Not only did they attract thousands of highly enthusiastic and experienced people from all over the world, but also through the continuous hosting of the summit, the summits gave participants from other countries the opportunity to learn about contributions from Taiwan. At the same time, the summits gave the domestic population with the same ambitions and hope to have a platform for communications and discussions, so as to solve specific social issues and to promote sustainable development through innovative business models and business ideas.

🤝 Of course, the most important aspect of hosting an international event is the local connections. In late September, MOEA colleagues and I, accompanying the organizers of the summit, met with Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan to seek administrative support from the city government. In addition to the promise of the Mayor Cheng regarding the support of the projects related to the venue of the summit, transportation connection, and enterprise connection, Mayor Cheng very efficiently formed an inter-departmental coordination group. He also introduced in detail the government’s assistance to the social enterprises, and suggested that the organizers could include more local elements of Taoyuan in the peripheral activities of the summit such as “social enterprise tours” and “social enterprise market.” It is worth expecting these elements in next year’s summit.

🌏 Moreover, in order to promote the 17 sustainable development goals and implement the overall policy objectives of “friendly and kind, suitable to live and work,” Mayor Cheng also revealed that the city is planning on a “Voluntary Local Review,” hoping to become the 12th local government in the world to verify and track the effectiveness of the sustainable development goals in the region with actual data and cases.

📈 In fact, according to the statistics indicators of the counties and cities of the Ministry of the Interior in 2018, the total birth rate of Taoyuan City is not only the highest in the six municipalities, but also one of the highest in the country, second only to the Lianjiang County. In addition, Taoyuan is the city with the highest net migration rate in Taiwan and the highest rate of social increase. These figures not only represent the achievements of Taoyuan in recent years, but also the foundation for promoting social innovation in the future. We look forward to Taoyuan’s contributions as a demonstration for all counties and cities in Taiwan, so we can flourish together toward the goals of sustainable development.