When I applied to the Laidlaw Scholars Programme, the Leadership-in-Action
experience was my main motivation. I wanted to be immersed in another
culture and contribute from within it. I also wanted my LiA to be a self-planned
project. I liked the idea of finding an organisation myself, understanding what
it needed, and building my role around that rather than joining an already
organised project.

When I started looking for an organisation, my main criterion was that I
wanted to understand how people from a different cultural and economic
context see the world. I was interested in how people might think about what a
society should look like from a perspective different from the one I was used
to. I searched mainly in the Asia-Pacific region because I speak some
Mandarin, which I thought would make it easier to work directly with people
and understand their perspectives.

After contacting and interviewing several local NGOs, I found UBI Taiwan, an
organisation advocating for universal basic income for Taiwanese citizens. At
first, the idea of UBI can sound utopian, but UBI Taiwan's work is more
focused on practical questions. The organisation is interested in improving the
quality of life of younger generations and giving them more freedom in
decisions such as what to study, what career to pursue, and when to start a
family.

This issue is particularly relevant for younger Taiwanese people. Taiwan has
experienced strong economic growth, particularly through its technology and
export industries, but this has not necessarily translated into better daily lives
for younger generations. Rising housing costs and financial pressure can
make it harder for young people to make choices based on what they actually
want.

My main task was to investigate the gap between Taiwan's economic growth
and how people experience that growth in their daily lives. I also looked at
possible short and medium-term policies that could help address this gap.
I focused on the possible creation of a sovereign wealth fund, looking at its
feasibility and its potential impact on the wider economy. This involved
interviewing different people, including representatives from Taiwan's bank
unions, journalists, and officials from the Bank of Taiwan. I worked under the
guidance of members of UBI Taiwan, who helped me understand the
organisation's work and the local context in which it operates.

A large part of my work involved direct contact with people in Taiwan. Most of
my interviews were conducted in Mandarin. I speak some Chinese, but some
of the vocabulary was difficult because the interviews involved economic and
policy terms. I therefore recorded the interviews so that I could translate and
analyse them afterwards. This was sometimes difficult, but it also forced me to
pay attention to differences in how people explained economic and social
issues rather than simply translating their words.

I also wanted to understand how these economic questions affected people's
everyday lives. I combined survey data with conversations and interviews with
NGO members. Several people described how financial pressure and rising
housing costs had affected their ability to choose what to study, which career
to pursue, or when to start a family. Their experiences gave a personal side to
what I was seeing in the data.

By the end of the internship, I brought together the interviews, survey
analysis, and my research on a sovereign wealth fund into a report for the
NGO. The report was intended to support UBI Taiwan's advocacy work and
provide evidence that could be used in discussions with policymakers and the
wider public.

I also worked directly with Taiwanese students by helping organise a debate
tournament about UBI. The students debated its advantages and
disadvantages and whether it should be implemented at all. The aim was not
to convince them of a particular position, but to give them a space to discuss
the issue and form their own opinions. I helped with the organisation and
logistics of the tournament, working with the local team to make the event
possible.

One thing I found interesting was that UBI Taiwan itself does not present a full
universal basic income as an immediate solution. The organisation is open
about the limitations and difficulties of the policy, while remaining committed to
the bigger goal of improving living conditions and giving young people more
freedom of choice.

This changed how I think about economic policy. Before the LiA, I mainly
thought about policies such as UBI in terms of whether they were
economically possible. Working with the organisation
made me think more about what these policies mean in people's everyday
lives. With the report, it was harder to see what difference my work would
make. I knew that the NGO could use the research in its advocacy, but I would
not see the result straight away, which make the impact effect less direct;
The experience also made me more aware of how difficult it is to understand
another culture. Translating the interviews was a question of language but
also of understanding their views and where their opinions came from, from a
historical background, and the island's tumultuous history and unstable status
quo.

My LiA was mainly connected to Sustainable Development Goal 10: Reduced
Inequalities, as UBI Taiwan’s work focuses on reducing the effects of
economic inequality and giving people more freedom of choice. It also related
to SDG 4: Quality Education through the debate tournament, which gave
Taiwanese students the opportunity to learn about and discuss UBI, and SDG
8: Decent Work and Economic Growth, through my research into the gap
between Taiwan’s economic growth and people’s quality of life.
My SMART goals were to understand Taiwan’s economic context, produce
research that could be used by UBI Taiwan, improve my communication
across languages and cultures, and contribute to the debate tournament. I
achieved the main outcomes of these goals, although not always in the way I
had expected.

Overall, the LiA helped me evaluate my goals. I achieved the main
outcomes I had set, but the experience also showed me that some goals
cannot be measured only by a final report or completed event. I developed a
better understanding of economic inequality, improved my communication
across cultural and language differences, and learned to adapt my work to the
needs of a local organisation.