Tainan City Government and Chang Jung Christian University Sign Agreement to Jointly Build the Tainan Youth Entrepreneurship Base

Xinying Nanying Green Heart Park Transforms into the Tainan Youth Entrepreneurship Base

To encourage young people to "unleash their creativity and put it into practice," help their entrepreneurial dreams come true, let them shine in Tainan, and further develop the city's diverse economy in cultural and creative industries, agriculture and digital fields, the Tainan City Government has revitalized and repurposed Nanying Green Heart Park, transforming it into the "Youth Dream-Building Park" and, together with Chang Jung Christian University, building the "Tainan Youth Entrepreneurship Base - BIG O2." A signing ceremony was held at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, July 8, in the first-floor lobby of the Minzhi Civic Center, providing a creative idea-generation space and co-working space for young people. Through this entrepreneurship platform, aspiring entrepreneurs from all over Taiwan can come to Tainan and bravely pursue their dreams!

At the event, Tainan Mayor Lai Ching-te and Chang Jung Christian University President Lee Yung-lung jointly signed the "Tainan Youth Entrepreneurship Base" cooperation agreement. In addition to Chang Jung Christian University board member Lee Si-hai, Deputy Mayor Yen Chun-tsuo, Labor Affairs Bureau Director-General Wang Hsin-chi, and City Councilors Li Tui-chih and Lai Hui-yuan, along with assistants from the service offices of Legislator Yeh Yi-chin, Secretary from Legislator Huang Wei-che's service office, and Secretary from Councilor Tsai Wang-chuan's service office, who all witnessed the signing ceremony as honored guests, Ms. Chen Shu-fen of the Wooden Clog Workshop, who successfully started a business in the city, was also invited to share her entrepreneurial journey on site and display her creative products.

In his remarks, Tainan Mayor Lai Ching-te first expressed his enormous gratitude to Chang Jung Christian University, stating that it was the first university to step off campus to seek entrepreneurial paths for young people. Last year, in the West Central District, it partnered with the city government's Labor Affairs Bureau to open the "BIG O Growing Up Dream Space." "BIG O" means big circle, which not only sounds similar to "Taiwan" in Taiwanese, but also carries the meanings of "greatly realizing dreams," "great fulfillment" and "fulfilling dreams." Chang Jung Christian University did not let anyone down and has delivered outstanding results over the past six months. This time, drawing on the university's experience, the "Tainan Youth Entrepreneurship Base BIG O2" was established at Nanying Green Heart in Xinying. Using the atmosphere as an analogy, he said, "We have already breathed in oxygen; in the future, the third layer will be the ozone layer (O3), which can block ultraviolet rays," expressing his hope that future young entrepreneurs will use Tainan as their base, with the city government providing necessary assistance and blocking all obstacles!

Lai Ching-te further explained that the Tainan City Government is actively promoting entrepreneurship, and cultivating young people's energy has three layers of meaning. First, innovation itself is the crystallization of human wisdom and the driving force of social progress. Tainan is the cultural capital, and it cannot have culture alone; it must also have new elements, so supporting innovation and invention allows the city to progress through continuous inheritance and innovation. Second, the issue of youth unemployment that society is currently concerned about, and where young people should go in the future, is also a problem the city government faces seriously. One way to solve youth unemployment is to turn young people's creativity into entrepreneurship. The city government provides co-working space so entrepreneurial teams can come to the base and offers various entrepreneurial resources and necessary basic equipment, allowing different work teams to learn from and inspire one another here. Therefore, encouraging entrepreneurship and establishing entrepreneurship bases is also a direction for solving youth unemployment. Third, in the era of globalization, starting a business in Taiwan can no longer be like building factories in the past, where large manufacturing plant areas hired hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of workers at once; such factories no longer exist because of environmental protection, land and manpower issues. But in the internet age, if young people's creativity gains market recognition, they can find the needed partner manufacturers through the internet, place orders, and proceed with manufacturing and selling. In the future, Taiwan needs creativity and research and development, which will in turn drive the upgrading of the entire industry, so the entrepreneurship base is especially meaningful.

Tainan City Labor Affairs Bureau Director-General Wang Hsin-chi said that according to a Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) survey, as many as 49.8% of people aged 18 to 34 in Taiwan have the intention to start a business. Therefore, the Labor Affairs Bureau actively responds to the public's needs and provides practical measures. Last year, it actively collected successful domestic and international practices for promoting youth employment and entrepreneurship and found that Singapore's youth co-working spaces had excellent results. Therefore, it used the city's idle public spaces to revitalize Nanying Green Heart Park into a youth entrepreneurship base and turn it into a youth dream-building park. At the same time, it brings young people's vitality, creativity and professionalism into Xinying, making it an important indicator for the development of cultural and creative industries in the greater Xinying area. The base's subtitle BIG O2 not only represents that the "Tainan Youth Entrepreneurship Base" is operated by Chang Jung Christian University and that the university is applying the practical experience from its previously established off-campus "BIG O Growing Up Dream Space," but also has a deeper meaning: it is hoped that through resources from all sides and young people's most valuable creative thinking, O2 (oxygen) will be injected into the city government's idle public space at Nanying Green Heart, revitalizing the idle space and filling it with the dreams and vitality of youth entrepreneurship.

Chen Mei-yen, director of the Labor Affairs Bureau's Vocational Training and Employment Services Center, said that with the establishment of the Tainan Youth Entrepreneurship Base, young people from all over the country who have entrepreneurial dreams are welcome to come to Tainan to build and realize their dreams. The base is available for rent to legally registered business owners, teams or individuals from all over Taiwan aged 20 to 44 who have innovative technologies, products or services that can revitalize the regional economy or create job opportunities, as well as innovative business concepts; all may apply to move in. Fee standards - independent office: 4,500 yuan per month (excluding water and electricity); co-working space: 1,500 yuan per person per month (including water and electricity). In addition to establishing a youth co-working space, the base also brings in small startup teams to move in, provides open space for users to carry out various entrepreneurial work, and uses transparent display windows in each space to exhibit and sell works by graduates of vocational training classes opened by the bureau's Vocational Training and Employment Services Center or by students of incubation centers at the city's major universities and colleges. It is estimated that about 40 young people can be accommodated, helping these entrepreneurs gain more exposure and marketing opportunities.

The Tainan Youth Entrepreneurship Base will have a preparatory period in July and August, and the base opening ceremony is expected to be held in mid-September. Interested young friends are welcome to call for inquiries. Inquiry phone numbers: Tainan City Government Labor Affairs Bureau Vocational Training and Employment Services Center 06-6330820 ext. 304, Ms. Chen Ying-chuang / 06-2785123, Chang Jung Christian University Innovation Incubation Center, Ms. Chen Wei-chun.