FAQ

Entrepreneurship

Question: Does the Commission provide financial assistance to youngsters starting businesses? What are the conditions for eligibility? What is the maximum amount available for a Business Start-up Loan? How is interest calculated? How is the loan repaid?

1. The Commission provides Business Start-up Loans for young people starting a business for the first time, to help them with start-up costs. Loans fall into two categories: guarantee loans, and non-guarantee loans.
2. Eligibility criteria are: Republic of China citizenship. Between 20 and 45 years of age. Work experience. Either the person in charge of the business, or the person putting up the capital. Not running any other business or holding any other post. The business's initial founding and registration for the actual operation within the agricultural, industrial or service sectors to have occurred no more than three years previously.
3. The maximum amount available to any person per application for a youth Business Start-up Loan, is NT$40 million, of which non-guarantee (fiduciary) loans are limited to NT$10 million. The maximum amount borrowed by the business must not exceed NT$120 million (of which individual fiduciary loans must be less than NT$30 million.)
4. The interest on this loan is fluctuating interest calculated from the postal two-year fixed deposit fund's fluctuating rate, plus an annual 1.45%. Beneficiaries of the small and medium-sized enterprises credit guarantee fund should, in line with regulations, expect to receive a guarantee surcharge (annual interest, 0.75%).
5. The loan period for non-guarantee loans is six years, with interest payable monthly after the first 12 months, and, starting from the 13th month, the remaining principal and interest averaged over 60 months. The loan period for signature loans is ten years, with interest payable monthly within the first 36 months, and, starting from the 37th month, the remaining principal and interest averaged over 84 months.

Vocational guidance

Question: What assistance can the National Youth Commission give to young people seeking their ideal job?

1. Young people seeking work can visit the NYC’s career information website, linked to the Council of Labor Affairs Virtual Employment Services Center, to investigate job opportunities that may be suitable for them, and enabling them to advance on their own initiative right to the point of accepting a job.
2. Young people seeking work may pursue opportunities by way of face to face discussions with the head hunting organizations involved in the activities organized by the NYC to seek talented individuals from the armed forces and campuses.
3. Those who lack job search skills may participate in the job search skills training for university and junior college graduates provided by the NYC’s youth employment information center.
4. Anyone who has difficulties in relation to such matters as career planning, the skills required in looking for work, or adaptation to a career, may contact the NYC’s Youth Hub youth exchange center, where the NYC can arrange for advisory instructors, free of charge, to provide advice and instruction about areas of difficulty. In addition, the NYC also organizes a ‘career-advice patrol bus,’ to guide young people who have already left their college campuses to the right career direction.

Public Affair Involvement
Question: In line with changes in the times and the environment, does the National Youth Commission, in advising overseas scholars to establish contact with the serving organizations, adapt the work concerning interaction between young people on either side of the Taiwan Strait?

1. Overseas scholars and organizations are a treasured national human resource. Their contribution to the process of the country's overall development, in raising academic standards, introducing high technology, and advancing national construction and political democratization, is widely acknowledged by the people of Taiwan . With such factors as the development of democratization, improvements in education and the development of economic construction in Taiwan; however, overseas scholars and their organizations are facing problems such as succession problems, ageing, organizational lassitude, and detachment from the current situation in Taiwan. Of course, in line with changes in the times and the environment, the National Youth Commission does adapt its plans for young people’s and NGOs' international participation in order to promote, as its focus, reciprocal exchanges between Taiwan and NGOs from all countries, to integrate overseas scholars and organizational capacity, and together expand Taiwan's space to participate in international activities.
2. For many years, the National Youth Commission has, in coordination with government policy, actively promoted cultural and educational exchanges between young people on either side of the Taiwan Strait, especially drawing up the National Youth Commission, Executive Yuan, Principles for Providing Awards and Assistance for Youth Exchanges Between the Two Sides of the Taiwan Strait, establishing the recipients, activities and criteria as models, and as the fundamental basis of execution and activation of the scheme. Its main aim is to increase the mutual understanding of young people on the two sides of the strait and advance mutual cross-strait benefits and advantages, with the purpose of both sides thriving by coexisting.  In addiction, the NYC can permit (but not encourage) scholars of People's Republic of China, who travel overseas, and, indeed, live overseas, to attend its activities in a personal capacity, in order to conduct communication and exchanges depending on the standpoint and contact of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission. Because of the current complex nature of cross-strait relations, under Taiwan 's current policy of gradual opening towards China , relatively sound interaction and exchanges are possible. However, the National Youth Commission's funds are limited, and, in order to enable resources to be utilized more effectively, the original guidelines are to be scrapped, and comprehensively redrafted.
3. The Overseas Chinese Commission, and domestic NPOs interested in conducting cross-strait exchanges can apply in accordance with the National Youth Commission's Principles for Subsidizing the Advancement of Youth Participation in the Development of the Third Sector, to hold all manner of youth international (including cross-strait) and NPO conferences and activities.

Volunteering
Question: Why is the National Youth Commission promoting youth-services-learning?
Services-learning is the combination of service and study; learning about outcomes through service, precisely as US scholar John Dewey has said, “learning by doing.” Services-learning, by way of explanation, is an experiential approach to learning which emphasizes the learning aspects of service in order to satisfy the needs of those served, while at the same time advancing the development of the service provider through planned service activities and a structured process of introspection. The National Youth Commission has the following four purposes in promoting services-learning:

1. To provide young people with a variety of service channels: Because of the wave of educational freedom reforms such as the Volunteer Service Law, Nine-Year Articulated Curriculum, and Senior High School Diversified Admission Program, there is an increasing trend for young people in Taiwan to want to perform voluntary service; however, as a proportion of that total, the actual number of people doing so is declining. Exploration of the reasons for this reveals that there aren't relevant guiding organizations and channels to accommodate the need currently. This is why the NYC is deliberating the method of the US and other advanced countries of driving services-learning, through which appropriate, school-led community services, or other extra-curricular, community services that complement their courses and meet the objective of learning by doing, advance students’ understanding of community and satisfy their desire to participate in communities and to change their community's environment.
2. To instill in youngsters a proper value system and outlook on life: The flourishing development of industry and commerce and the rise of utilitarianism in recent times have created a breakdown in values and a general dearth of reflection and concern on the part of young people. For this reason, guidance in concepts of services-learning enables young people to forge a particularly profound learning experience from “learning while doing,” stimulating all the more reflection, enabling them to combine specialties with service, providing them with the humanistic concerns that they currently lack in their vocational studies, and encouraging them to cultivate an outlook that prompts them to forge ahead happily and contribute actively within an ever-changing service community.
3. To build bridges between schools and communities: There is currently a general lack of community awareness in Taiwan, but the services-learning pioneered by the NYC, combining the forces of civil organizations, has designed many and varied study activities. Not only providing

   Updated Date  10-11-11