LIN, JUN-CHENG, Youth Returning Home to Sanxia; A Story Began A Decade Ago; What’s Next?

LIN, JUN-CHENG, the founder of the Can Culture Art and Nature, is also a youth returning home to Sanxia a decade ago. From accompanying high-risk children in the community, exploring local culture, to re-design of community to transform Sanxia, which was the origin from a decade ago. So, what has changed over the past ten years?

For ten years, we still accompany the high-risk children in the community. The first group of children that we accompanied has gradually grown up, and we also continued to expand our companionship and the support system that we offer. We established Grass Functional School to help children exploring their futures. Each year, we still bring children to travel around the island to fulfill their dreams. A lot can change during a decade; however, we have never changed on the path of providing companionship. 

Except for community companionship, we continued to try out various possibilities in the fields of culture and education, to change the picture that people have in their minds regarding the land of Sanxia. Bearing the concept of “Sanxia can be different,” we created the regional brand “Can Sanxia” exclusive to Sanxia this year. We managed to carry forward the brand, except for exhibitions, we also organized a craftsmen market for Sanxia, allowing people to see Sanxia, and to see the particular aspects we found about Sanxia during these years.

For ten years, we still adhere to environmental education and keep organizing river clean-up every month; however, such acts were still not able to reduce the generation of plastic wastes. Therefore, we began to consider what else we could do apart from river clean-up. As such, 913 Used Clothes Circular Sharing Bags project was brought to earth. We aim to transform unnecessary clothes in people’s closets into convenient, portable bags, replacing the generation of plastic wastes. The environmental-friendly bags made from used clothes collection initiated by the Can provided employment opportunities that allow mothers in the community to grant new lives to used clothes with their clever fingers. The Can welcomes you to join us for conveying the plastic waste reduction in the community, as well as the concept of sharing and mutual benefit.

What Can Culture Art and Nature has been through so far has not been easy. We have many projects along the way that we had pain and gains. However, what made us different was the concept that “giving up” is never an option. Creating land projects for co-existence, sharing, and mutual benefits have always been our greatest goal. As for now, we would love to bring our experiences to different corners across Taiwan, hoping that someday we can build up the power from our society to transform Taiwan and transform our homeland with the small changes that we have done.