How a high school student's confusion became a national policy voice

In 2022, I was a senior in high school — and I was completely confused. Taiwan's 108 curriculum reform had just launched, and my cohort was the first to go through it. There were no seniors to ask, no established playbook, no clarity on what a good learning portfolio even looked like. In Caotun, far from Taipei's tutoring ecosystems and information networks, that confusion felt especially isolating.

That first-hand frustration became the seed of EdYouth Taiwan. Not because I thought I could fix the curriculum — but because I realized that nobody was systematically documenting what students were actually experiencing. And without that data, any reform conversation would be happening above our heads, without us.

Why a formal organization, not just a social media post

I made a deliberate choice early on: build an organization, not just a voice. The reasoning was strategic. Personal observations are anecdotes. Organizational surveys are evidence. If I wanted education officials and legislators to take the data seriously, I needed it to come from something with institutional standing, not just a frustrated student online.

By 2023, EdYouth had formally incorporated as a nonprofit with the Ministry of the Interior — 臺灣一滴優教育協會. We had members across 22 counties, an annual survey methodology collecting 1,300+ valid responses, and deep-dive interviews with students including from indigenous communities, rural areas, and students with disabilities.

What the numbers don't capture

Our 2022 report found that 40% of teachers spend fewer than 10 minutes reviewing a student's learning portfolio. The 2024 report ran to 150+ pages and included 40 interviews alongside 1,000+ survey responses. Those findings were cited in Taiwan's CRC international review and by 19+ legislators across party lines.

But the number I'm actually proudest of is harder to quantify: the moment when a conservative parent group that had been publicly opposing everything EdYouth stood for agreed to fund us for three consecutive years. That story is below.

Turning opponents into allies

This parent group was vocal about wanting to restore traditional standardized exams. On the surface, our positions seemed incompatible — they wanted to roll back reform, we wanted to improve it. The obvious response would have been to treat them as adversaries.

Instead, I tried to understand what was actually driving their position. Underneath the policy disagreement was a shared anxiety: they believed the new system was unfair to students who didn't have access to Taipei's information networks and tutoring resources. Which is exactly what I'd experienced in Caotun. We were arguing about solutions, but we shared the same problem.

Once I saw that, I invited them to participate in our forum — not to debate, but to be heard alongside everyone else. They called it a good deal. They funded us for three years. And the reports we published with that support became stronger because they included their perspective.

What I built, and then gave away

I stepped down as founding chair at the end of 2024, after two and a half years. The hardest part wasn't leaving — it was making sure the organization didn't need me to function. I spent the last stretch designing transition mechanisms: documentation, governance structures, succession planning. The goal was to convert EdYouth from a founder-dependent initiative into an institution that would outlast its founders.

It's still running. That's the part I'm most proud of.