Best 2 Weeks So Far – Work at Taipei City Government
By: Yoonjung Choi, CAS ’27
GRIP: Taipei City Government
Upon arriving in Taipei, I was immediately struck by the vibrant energy of the city—the fast pace, the sounds, and the buzz of daily life. On my first day at the Department for Youth, I joined the other interns for orientation on the 9th floor of the Taipei City Government Office. There, we were introduced to the goals of the Global Research & Internship Program (GRIP) and learned that this is the first year of collaboration between UPenn and the Taipei City Government. We met the department staff we’d be working alongside and began to get to know each other as interns.
One thing that surprised me was the size and diversity of the intern cohort: 22 students in total, with 12 from Taiwan and 10 from the U.S. and Japan. We were divided into four groups, each tasked with a research project. I found my seat at a back table with four other students—people who quickly became not only my teammates, but also close friends.
During our first week, my team and I chose to focus our research on one of Taipei’s most pressing social challenges: the city’s declining birth rate. After doing a literature review of the current policies, we started brainstorming different possible policy options, using case studies as references. The staff at the office told us that this project would be especially important due to the department seriously considering implementing the ideas from our work after the internship concludes. In addition to our long-term project, we created a slide deck highlighting our global immersion experiences and intercultural dialogue and got to visit local nonprofit organizations. We presented our slidedeck to the incoming students at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology’s Applied Foreign Languages Department, sharing insights into our backgrounds and the cultural exchange embedded in this internship.
This internship so far has not only been meaningful, but very memorable. The staff at the office are intelligent, welcoming, and supportive, always encouraging us to share our ideas. Some skills that I have been using are my research and organizational skills, while I have been developing my mandarin speaking skills in the area of government as well as my public speaking skills. Outside the office, I’ve loved experiencing Taiwanese culture: riding You-Bikes around the city and trying night market street food (super hard to choose, but I would have to say my favorites currently are tofu desserts and steaming hot bao buns!).
Through these past two amazing weeks here in the Office, one of the most memorable highlights of the internship so far was meeting the Mayor of Taipei, Chiang Wan-an, at the Anniversary Party for the Department in the ground floor of our office building. The Mayor was a Penn Carey Law alum, and he welcomed us warmly to the Department for Youth. Hearing his commitment to youth voices and his approach to policy making was incredibly motivating. It was particularly powerful to see how open he was to getting to know and hearing directly from young people like us.
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