The purpose of “the Root Cultivation Program”, a program under the New Agricultural Movement launched by the Council of Agriculture, is mainly to cultivate the human resources for the further promotion of the Taiwan’s rural communities’ development. Through the tailored training courses for each individual rural community, arranging professional lecturers as well as presenting basic concepts for rural community development and the field practices, it surely will lead all the people living in the community participating the developmental activities based on this established scheme, and eventually to the robust development of the rural communities in Taiwan. On Feb.25, COA held the 2007 program’s result presentation conference at the Dome Theater, Taipei County. All the 6 awarded excellent rural communities for carrying out successfully of this program send representatives to attend this conference to show the fruitful results of this training program.

The program initiated and implemented by the Soil and Water Conservation Bureau, COA in the year of 2004. Since that time on there are many rural community development workers received this training and after the training they become more and more skillful on the work and involved more fully to the work of making the rural communities charming. Up to this year, there are 510 classes in total completed the training courses which include the following 4 categories: basic care, advanced, nuclear as well as specialist courses. The total numbers of the rural community development workers who have completed this training are 13,466.The training courses mainly focus on rural community robust growth, local spirit and culture cultivation. Owing to the courses tailored to the individual community they are very practical and applicable based on the overall evaluation of the workers who received this training program.

“ the Root Cultivation Program” courses, more specifically, emphasis on the followings: soil and water conservation education and promotion, rural community environment improvement, how to attract the rural community people to participate the improvement works of their community, how to establish a good scheme to encourage the local people to actively participate their community development works, the rural community planning and construction knowledge and technique as well as training local people to do the community works themselves. Through the efforts of the branch offices of the Soil and Water Conservation Bureau as well as the Root Cultivation task force, this training program gained enthusiastic supports from many rural communities in Taiwan and also attracted more and more communities to participate, at the same time, obtained very fruitful results.

This presentation conference mainly for the results exhibition which obtained from the implementation of this training program at the year of 2007. Among the communities participated in a competition from north , central, south as well as east areas of Taiwan, we employed a comparison method to single out the excellent communities which carried out the program the most successful. The communities which won the excellent award come to Taipei to attend the presentation conference and exchange the experiences with other excellent communities. The name list of the excellent training communities are as follows:

North Taiwan area:

1.Kong-Rong community, Sanchi Township, Taipei County.

2. San-Charshui community, Long-Tang Township, Taoyuan County.

3. Tung-San community, Kuan-Hsi Township, Hsin-Chu County.

4. Da-jin community, Tong-shan Township, I-lan County.

Central Taiwan area I:

1. San-Wan Cultural, Industrial and Tourism Development Association, Miao-Li County.

2. Tong-jing community, San-wan Township, Miao-li County.

3. Pei-Pu community, San-Wan Township, Miao-Li County.

4. Shi-gang Farmers’ Association, Tai-Chung County.

5. Hsin-She Agri-tourism Development association, Tai-Chung County.

6. Ma-Li-Pu Recreational Agriculture Park, Tai-Chung County.

7. San-Shui community, Tou-Wu Township, Miao-Li County.

8. Su-Tan community, Tou-Wu Township, Miao-Li County.

Central Taiwan area II:

1.He-Bao community, Ku-keng Township, Yuan-Lin County.

2. Nan-Kang community, Ko-Xin Township, Nan-Tou County.

3. Shang-An community, Shui-Li Township, Nan-Tou County.

South Taiwan area:

1. Hong-Cheh community, Shua-Jia Township, Tainan County.

2. Chia-Fu community, Chia-Li Township, Tainan County.

3. Yueh-Jin Cultural and History Development Association, Yen-Shui Township, Tainan County.

4. Guei-Dan community, Nan-Si Township, Tainan County.

5. Yu-Sang community, Nan-Hua Township, Tainan County.

6. Shin-Kao community, Li-Kang Township, Ping-Tung County.

East Taiwan area I:

1. Dian-kuang community.

2. Pei-Li community.

3. Dar-Wang community.

East Taiwan area II:

1. Jia-na-na community.

2. Mi-Chien community.

3. Da-Feng community.

At that presentation day, in addition to showed the fruitful trainging results, COA also present a certificate to the excellent model rural development workers publically .At the same time, held a competition called “ Cultivate the Dream , Make the Dream True”, through the votes casted by the participates to select the best community showing the enthusiastic and passionate spirit by the community work forces under this program. After the vote, the best ones have been awarded at the spot. Finally, consensus have been reached on the meeting that a same conference be hold next year to show the 2008 results so the community development workers have the chance to meet again next year.