Although the SOW Parent-Child Group shares many similarities to other groups, there are still few significant differences. In the course of SOW activities, we train children to adopt and practice Green Life. Participants are required to bring their own tableware and reduce the use of disposable plastic products. On the other hand, when doing outdoor activities, the key difference is that the SOW Parent-Child Group emphasizes on teaching and guiding everyone to care and love the environment, educating our children that the beautiful nature has to be protected. Through my years of participation in the Parent-Child Group, I am most touched to see the children’s self-discipline. Through various parent-child group activities, SOW establishes standards and rituals such as “table grace”, allowing children to develop self-discipline and a sense of responsibility in life.

The destruction to the lower part was man-made. During the agricultural era, Shuanglianpi’s area was larger than the Longtan Lake, the largest lake in Yilan. Our ancestors came here and started to settle down and cultivate the area. In order to feed the people, they needed more area to farm. Therefore they had dug a ditch, causing the lower part of Shuanglianpi to dry up. The upper part remained because it had more water resources. As Shuanglianpi is private owned, it is difficult to prevent the owner from developing the land. The owner also built a water gate to control the water flow, which had caused siltation in the upper section. SOW had conducted an on-site survey 10 years ago, the silt level was over 4 meters. Siltation had caused the environment to become unsuitable for many aquatic plants, which had further led to problems in the restoration of Shuanglianpi. However, it is also difficult to simply knock down the watergate because the climate has changed in the past three years with rising temperature and less precipitation. Eutrophication has become a serious issue. If the aquatic plants continue to disappear, we are afraid that the evaporation of lake water will be greater and that Shuanglianpi may become a swamp or even disappear. It is still possible to clean up and restore the lake environment, but it has become much more difficult to do so. 　

The success of building an eco-city depends on people’s values and way of thinking. First we must start with education and promotion, so that everyone can have a consensus on environmental issues. The creation of an eco-city can be viewed as building a community with gradual improvement and transformation, slowly increasing the ecological presence in the human-oriented living space. For example, we can start from green fields and beautiful gardens, establishing a small habitat for firefly. With good habitat management, such ecological change will earn the approval of nearby residents, then we can make further improvements and add more ecological projects, which is considered a better way to deal with the eco-city ideal.

In the past, most school’s environmental education had focused on getting students to know, interact, and protect their hometowns. As children are now living in more urbanized cities, the new syllabus puts more emphasis on outdoor education. For example, many schools have come to our Yilan branch for field trips and outdoor activities. It’s not just about having fun in the natural environment doing river tracing and boating, but to let the children understand why we can do such activities with clean waters instead of stinky ditch next to our homes. The rivers and the surrounding grass and trees have purifying functions, which can provide us a safe and clean water resource to play in. We should have more outdoor education and activities that further extend children’s reach to nature and promote environmental education.