The building of a sense of local identity by youth volunteers in Taiwan Alishan's Zhuqi Township through local participation

Abstract

Local culture is important historical stories which the local development is based upon. Multicultural stories are an important accumulation of life and the core of settlement development. During the Japanese occupation period, the important cultural asset “Alishan Forest Railway” was built in “Zhuqi”, the area of this study which affected the development of the entire Chiayi City. This study starts from local resources, and aims to transfer local resources to “youth” through education. The local community education curriculum is design based on local stories to allow “local youth” to experience and practice the curriculum through action, research, observation and different phases of learning courses, and to further enable the “youth” to form a “sense of local identity” with the local culture and self-value recognition, so as to explore the identity building process and the nature behind it. In addition, the way the local culture and community education are merged is explored through action research.