The Coastline Creation in Diamond Fish Village - the Project of Yong An Fishing Village in Kaohsiung

Why the emergence of a bowl of congee can change the teachers’ existing modes of lecturing and reignite the students’ passion for learning at the same time? The idea of YGC introduce local issues into curriculum, which are about food and nutrition: the local ingredients and the sufficient nourishments for the elderly. USR Project starts with the high-quality seafood, making products like smoked grouper, grilled milkfish, Thai-style grouper, and now nutrition for elderly. The process shows the benefits of teamwork. There are teachers and students from the Department of Seafood Science working on R&D of YGC, and with specific packaging from students of the Department of Industrial Design. YGC cooperates with varied companies for sustaining economics and expanding distribution channel. It’s working with noted large-scale channels and supporting industry-academia cooperation projects. YGC makes locals understand grouper is much more valuable than they expected. The grouper is from the main aquaculture farms area of Taiwan, Yongan. Thanks to the CPC’s LNG water, named “diamond water” by fish farmers, the grouper raised has a mild and delicate taste with excellent quality. However, local fish farmers used to be limited by high cost of primary fish processing. Government has assisted in construction of primary processing plants, but it still lacks large-scale food production and food safety managers. USR team works with the YFA by designing production lines and obtaining GHP and HACCP certification. Currently, fresh grouper would be directly delivered to processing plants. 3 tons of fish can be processed daily and 40 tons can be frozen and stored, which will increase the value by 600 million NTD annually. YGC keeps the processing plants working and growing.

The purpose of “eating locally” is to be eco-friendly and reduce the food’s carbon footprint. While high-quality fish products are sold to various places, schoolchildren in Yongan cannot enjoy local delicacy for lunch. USR team and YFA bear responsibility and hence organize events of food sharing. By giving away bowls of grouper congee, students are allowed to eat locally as well as learn the knowledge of eating fish. This event attempts to make the public aware of the fact: no local seafood in school lunch for local schoolchildren.

YGC is not simply the highlight of this project that carries out USR and CSR, and it also achieves the food security of SDGs.