Oh, thank you.

I’ve read the slides that they prepared for me, and it’s great introduction to all your work, network, and the local. It’s your first time here, or?

It is my first time in Taipei, but I’m so excited to be here and learn about the amazing work that you’re doing in the country. Of course, Nancy and I have been working together for many years now, so it’s a privilege to be here.

Excellent. In Taiwan, we’re now having this index of people who work in social innovation so that you can very easily discover like-minded organizations. It’s SDG-indexed, meaning if you see, say, no poverty or sustainable economy, that’s 12.

You can very easily find like-minded people doing similar things in the network. It’s a way to get people from the corporations, from the co-op movement, from the non-for-profit sector, and even universities to build coalitions toward common goals. It just went online, so I had to mention that.

That’s exciting. Congratulations.

Yeah, it’s called SI Taiwan, on the si.taiwan.gov.tw website.

That’s amazing. How do organizations become, are able to be listed on this? Can they self-elect in, or have you identified the ones that…?

Yeah, starting next month, there’s going to be a regulation for the registration. People in the for-profit organizations, they have to provide part of their charter, like the logging of their mission, as well as annual reports of their benefit report to show the impact that they’re actually having.

Now, people coming from the not-for-profit sector, of course, also have to show their fiscal accountability report and how their sustainability missions is aligned with the actual expenditure of the not-for-profit.

If you’re a co-ops, it’s something else entirely. [laughs] Basically, we’re adapting to each organization, but to have the partnership for the common goals through this registry, which is cross different sectors.

That’s fantastic.

If anyone buys from this, procures continuous food, as we call it here – 續食, or 盛食 as in 豐盛, right？

盛食, yeah.

“Abundant food.”

We don’t use the word 剩食…

Leftover food. You don’t say leftover, you say abundant, or things like that, if it’s integrated into the supply chain. If it’s more than $5 million anti-dollars per year, then I personally go out and give them an award. It’s what we call social buying power.

All this way is just to get the corporate think beyond CSR and think it as a sustainability strategy. That’s the movement that I am trying to just give some contribution to.

Wow, fantastic. That’s very interesting. It’s a very innovative way to think about it as well. That’s great.

Do you want some about the GFN, what they do in the world?

I read about it on the website.

You know it all. No, seriously, it’s true.

Hopefully, you could figure out what we do from the website. We’re trying to be better at that.

Your website’s pretty good, actually.

It’s properly responsive. You can view it on mobile phone. It’s a great experience, so very comfortable website.

Thank you. I’m glad this is recorded, so I can share it with my communications person.

That’s right. You can quote me on that.

They’re doing a fabulous job of explaining the hunger, the waste, and how to reconfigure the cycle. This really is good communication material.

Oh, thank you. [laughs] That’s fantastic. One of the things that I think is progressive about the way that you all are thinking about things – and one thing I wanted to hear from you – is specifically how you see the digital transformation playing into your view on social innovation.

One of the things that we’re grappling with is how do we leverage these technological tools to become much more efficient in food redistribution?

That’s right.

Also, reduce costs, because so many of our members are located in countries where it’s extremely difficult to have capital-intensive infrastructure.

Exactly. Taiwan is somewhat privileged in that, because we have broadband as human right. Even in the most rural places, or in the indigenous lands, or even in offshore islands, you’re almost guaranteed to have 10 Megabits per second. Otherwise, it’s our fault, of the National Communication communication.

He is a delegate. We’re doing very well on that. Unlimited 4G connection is about $15 USD per month, so it’s very affordable. Because of that, we can assume that everybody have media link. Based on that, there’s a lot of social innovation that you can just do like this.

People who record their video messages, uploading them on blockchains, distributed ledgers for mutual accountability. People who measure air pollutions. For example, these all 2,000 points are all citizen scientists.

They don’t rely on any government material and just set up those very cheap, less than $100 USD, stations to measure air pollution, to upload it to the distributed ledger. The government just, we can’t beat them, so we join them and say, “Where are the places that you want an AirBox, but you cannot get into?”

There’s the industrial parks, because they are private land. It turns out we own the lamps, so we can hang the AirBoxes there, or offshore islands. North of Pescador Island, we’re going to have wind turbine power plants, so you can hang AirBox there.

Basically, we play complementary, not dominating the social sector’s agenda, but complementing the social sector, where their power cannot quite easily reach. This is mostly because I think in Taiwan, the social sector have a decade of head start.

Before we even have presidential election, which was in ‘96, there’s already a decade or more after the lifting of the martial law for the social sector to gain legitimacy.

I don’t think this is easily transferable, but it also means that whatever social innovations that Taiwan can gather, you usually see partnerships between the social, the private, and the public sector. The end results of these, like the AirBox, can be very easily redeployed, because it’s all open source.

Meaning that anyone can download the software and change the software. For example, we contribute – in “we,” we say the social sector contributes – to, for example, Time Bank, which requires a lot of software to manage.

There is no plausible Time Bank without software support. Because they are based on public blockchains, or they are based on open source software, we make sure that everything that is entering this kind of experiment, like there’s the self-driving tricycles.

Again, it’s open hardware. People can tinker it to look however they like and fit better with the society. Most concretely, I would invite anyone who want to look at the social innovators to, for example, just this Saturday in the Academia Sinica, there is a large hackathon going.

Anyone with a social issue to solve, but don’t have the programming expertise, can go onstage and go a five-minute speech and just recruit designers, coders, and whatever to make a prototype happen within a day.

Then they just start meetings every week. Go to hackathons is my first recommendation. My second recommendation is to look at the social enterprises, social entrepreneur that emerges from those hackathons, that did find impact investment, and to learn about their business models.

We give out award, like the Asia-Pacific Social Innovation Partnership Award, APSIPA, so that we highlight all the cases from the Asia-Pacific for useful collaboration. Like there’s one between Carrefour Taiwan…Carrefour being that market thing.

Of course, yeah.

And the Taiwan, what do they call it, Animal Society Protection Association, or something like that. An advocacy organization, usually not associated with Carrefour.

They worked on a co-branding campaign. Carrefour started carrying free-range eggs, free of animal cruelty products, and things like that. They work extensively with the association on a co-branding marketing campaign.

That case is the most unlikely cases of partnership, the more likely that we give out award to. Those partnership cases, many of them are in the NPO hub, freshly established in Taipei. Maybe you would like to have a visit to the NPO hub and learn from those unlikely partnerships.

How are you defining social impact?

The social innovators here in Taiwan, we use the SDGs as the common index. There’s 169 different beautiful logos to use.

If you can identify with any 1 of the 169…Basically, whenever we have a Presidential Hackathon, for example, you see the cohort looking like this, and each one, a very specific, 1 of the 169.

It’s very rare that if you work for a social innovation and benefit for the whole society that you find your mission not represented in the 169 goals, because original design was, “No goal left behind,” right?

Exactly.

We use that as the common index.

It’s a very big umbrella.

That’s right, that’s right. No goals left behind.

[laughs] I’m curious. Obviously, we’re very interested in food loss and waste. What type of activity are you seeing in the social innovation sector specifically on that, outside of the food banking initiatives?

Actually, I think is, is it also Carrefour? It must also be Carrefour who also have this, its own food programs that continues the shelf life. At the moment, it really requires a legal contract for it to happen because of the food safety law here is rather strict.

That’s because people collectively lost trust in the institutions to protect food safety some 10 years ago. That resulted in one of the most strict food safety laws. Indeed, within the administration, we have an office dedicated to food safety.

We only have two of those offices, one for food safety and one for cyber security. You know how serious this is. Basically, it really requires a good legal underpinning. It’s not just software code, but also legal code as well, to not run afoul of the food safety issues.

I would say that most of the innovations that I’m aware of is around the design of the contracts of how the software reflects the contracts, how to attribute accountability along each way, how to take photos. You probably know more than I know, but there’s many innovations happening in this way to lower the already very burdensome administrative cost associated with food continuation programs.

That’s the main social innovation. I know that people have been clamoring for a special section for food continuation in the food safety law, but we’re on the last session of the parliament, of this parliament now. It’s very unlikely to introduce new laws. It would probably have to wait until next January.

OK, very interesting. That’s fascinating. I think it’s so unique, this kind of support for the public-private partnership. In terms of especially digital and information tools, like I mentioned, we’re really seeing that, with the advent of technology in emerging markets, you’re seeing retailers, for example, being able to better categorize their surplus product.

That information then can be very quickly transmitted to the food bank, where they happen to be based. Then the food bank can then connect charities that are around where the retailer is, regardless of their size.

Very much so.

If it’s a big retailer, like a Carrefour, obviously, they have a lot of surplus on a daily basis. Even smaller corner stores or convenience stores, a charity can come by and pick it up, really within a couple of hours’ notice.

We’re seeing really great success in those types of technologies. What we’ve found is that the private sector is willing to actually pay for that, because they, of course, it’s great PR.

It’s also in their interest.

Exactly, because they don’t have to pay the landfill, the surplus product. We’re very interested in seeing…It’s been rolled out, for example, in the United Kingdom. It’s being rolled out in Canada.

We’re also supporting pilots of it in Colombia, and really thinking, is this a way to reduce costs and get more surplus recovered for the purposes of hunger relief in other countries?

Awesome. That’s great.

Yeah.

I mostly learned about this from the Carrefour anti-food waste project. They have a dedicated project for that. It’s not just in their store, but rather also in bookstores, such as the Housebook60.

Ah, 書屋花甲.

You’ll probably know that.

Yeah.

Carrefour basically tried to modularize their SOP, the standard operation procedure. They partnered with, it call itself a bookhouse, but it’s actually a café, so it’s very confusing. I’m sure that they have books there as well.

Hard to say.

To have a shared refrigerator and with a good SOP for it to replicate. I think they’re doing OK, and they’re getting more visibility now.

Oh, very interesting. They’ve tried to do a similar project like that in Paraguay and then in Shanghai as well. They’ve good success. It’s a great way to build community, too, I think. It’s fascinating.

I would say that for the food banks in Taiwan, actually the Mr. Fang’s, that’s very much the…

Community’s project.

Yeah, community-based food bank. Later this afternoon, I actually, because Lisa’s coming here. We have organized a meeting to have the less informal, the meeting with 1919 and Andrew food banks.

Yeah, that’s another one.

All of us, we are doing Taiwan island-wide.

Andrew is really also very scalable.

Yeah, two of them, they are serving individual household. We are probably the only one serving the small to medium sized NGOs. We’ve been founded since 2011, over eight years, and serving the organizations. We’re also the only certified member in Taiwan, of GFN.

I know. I’ve read your slides.

We are thinking that, for this trip, probably, as one of the members of food bank, we are thinking about to promote the World Food Day. That’s in October 16th. Earth Day, everybody knows here Earth Day, but not many people here knows the World Food Day.

The World Food Day, that’s right.

We are thinking of building, and thinking about that. Starting this year, we co-work with other big NGOs, starting to promote the World Food Day.

That’s excellent.

That’s serious activities be under planning and building. We are thinking about, is that possible, because we will have some activities during the October. Is that possible to invite Minister Tang as one of the speakers, keynote speakers? Is that possible? Maybe later, check with your…

It’s a Wednesday, right?

It is.

It is a Wednesday.

The activities will be in Saturday and Sunday.

The following Saturday?

No, October 12th and 13th.

The previous Saturday? Then I will be in Osaka.

Osaka, yeah.

If it’s the next Saturday, then it’s the annual forum of SE Insight, of 社企流. I will be there in the morning, but I’m free in the afternoon. That’s the following weekend. The previous one, I will be in Osaka.

It’s OK. That week, you can have a short video.

Yeah, I’ll do a short video, of course.

Oh, yeah, really short video or something.

If you run an event, then isn’t it the national day? It’s like four-day long vacation.

Yes, there’s four days, so we’re taking the last two days, the Saturday and Sunday, and we’ll have some promotion activities including booths, seminars, etc. in Taiwan University.

Oh, yeah, in Taiwan University.

Oh, great.

I guess more than 100 booths will be in that. Also, a serious forums will be conducted.

Oh, that’s really something. That’s great. If you have anything that you want me to say, as long as it’s legal, just write me an email. My staff will review for legality, and I will say it.

I will say. It’s fine.

Before that, we can video, right? Video and kind of shortcut, probably film this.

Yeah, sure. I can record a high definition video for you. Just let me know the length and the format, like 4:3 or 16:9.

OK, it’s good.

I always publish after you publish on YouTube, so that everybody knows it…Even if they didn’t know you, they will read the transcript. They can view the video and discover you and then get in contact with you.

We can promote it as part of GFN’s World Food Day campaign as well.

Yeah, I’d love to. I’d love to.

That’ll be great.

Anyone who can identify which specific SDG…

…you are working on, I’m very happy to help. You have two or three SDGs.

Also, one thing for Lisa. Lisa, GFN this year, they has cooperate with the Walmart Foundation and have a project with the Harvard University. Would you like to mention that, as related to policy side?

Yeah. Obviously, a big part of the way food banks, as you all know, work is that it’s important that food producers all along the supply chain are donating the project. There’s a number of policy barriers to that in many places.

There’s liability concerns, of course. Is the food going to be potentially diverted for sale and end up on the gray market? There’s obviously food safety concerns. A lot of times, it is cheaper, in some places, to throw away food than it is to donate it.

There’s a lack of tax or financial incentives. We’re partnering with Harvard University to an in-depth study of 15 different countries.

An atlas.

I’m sorry?

An atlas.

Yeah, it’s an atlas. You read the press release. Oh, my goodness. See? Again, you know everything. It’s fabulous. Anyway, no, it’s great.

Does it include Taiwan?

Not in the first round. I’m so sad. When it does, I’ll make sure I call. We’re excited about it. We’re hoping to eventually do it for all of our members. Hopefully, give companies and food producers the information that they need to donate with confidence from the legal frameworks.

This is great. This is like establish the norms outside the jurisdictions, and then jurisdictions can accustom ourselves to the new norm. I think that’s the right way. Have the social innovation lead the regulatory innovation, instead of the other way around.

That’s a very smart way to think about it. Very interesting.

We’d love to participate. When you are ready to include Taiwan, then we will work with the…

No, that would be wonderful. [laughs] Hopefully, after the first phase.

Excellent.

That’s great.

We have the other, you can talk about in Seoul, we have Asia regional conference soon in late October.

Yeah, of course. Anyway, food banking is very new in the Asia-Pacific region, as you probably know. We’re really fortunate to have five members in the region. There is also a food banking system in Japan that we’re aware of and stay in touch with.

Generally, in Southeast Asia, the model is still very new. Over the next three years, GFN is committed to fostering the social entrepreneurs that want to start food recovery organizations in Southeast Asia. We’re taking a cohort approach to it.

We’ve invited leaders from seven countries throughout Southeast Asia to be part of this program. We’re going to convene them annually, obviously, so they can meet each other and share best practices, do training, knowledge exchange.

We’re also linking them up with mentors within the network, so people that obviously walked this walk before and can share knowledge. We’re putting together a corporate council of companies that are working in the region that are interested in seeing food banking take off.

The commitment these companies are making is that they’re going to provide some sort of asset to these non-profits. Whether it be product donation, but thing, also skill sharing. Maybe it’s warehouse space. Maybe it’s technological support, governance support, things like that.

All sort of in-kind supports.

Exactly. Then we’re also providing some limited seed financing. The idea is that, after participation in this program for three years, that we’re hoping these organizations will be serving approximately 40,000 people facing hunger in their communities.

Can we jump-start these social ventures in a much faster way than what they’ve…Normally, it could take 5 to 7 to 10 years for a food bank to become established. Anyway, that’s launching in Seoul. It’s the week after World Food Day.

It’d be very interesting to stay in touch, because there might be a way to collaborate on that.

Sure. You mean that it’s in the weekdays before?

It’s the week after. It’s October 21st through 23rd in Seoul. Then we’re inviting all the members in the Asia-Pacific region to join us for the 24th and 25th.

That’s great.

Yeah, it should be a good time.

I’d love to put you in touch with, for example, the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation, which is the main foundation to run the new southbound policy. We target exactly the same countries.

You target, I’m sorry, what?

Exactly the same countries.

Oh, really? OK. [laughs]

They have programs for civil society connectivity, for youth leadership, for regional resilience, and so on. They also run their own cohort, and they do training camps, and whatever in Taiwan.

I’m sure that you can leverage each other’s network very efficiently, because it’s essentially the same social entrepreneurs that you’re looking at. Maybe some of them have enrolled in both programs. I’d love to put you in contact with the AEF. As for myself, I will be in Ethiopia at the time, in Addis Ababa.

Good for you. Oh, wonderful. Addis is wonderful.

Oh, you’ve been, too?

Of course. Yes, it is. [laughs]

That’s great.

Not since they built the high-speed rail, though. Have you taken it yet?

No. It will be my first time in Addis Ababa.

Oh, really? Are you going to Seyad? Are you going to go to the north at all, go to Lalibela?

No, the Social Enterprise World Forum will be four-day long. I will just be trapped in Addis for that. It’s my first time, so it’s good.

It’s not a bad place to be trapped. It’s such a wonderful city, and the weather is always so wonderful there.

Yay, OK.

Well, enjoy yourself.

We’ll be fine. [laughs]

That’s great. We would love to be connected, though, to the foundation.

Just send me an email with that agenda, or tentative agenda, and I will forward it to the TAEF.

That would be great. Thank you so much.

I will send that next week.

Sure, of course. At your convenience. The TAEF will be around for a long time.

Thank you.

That’s wonderful.

Anything else you would like to address?

Yeah, anything you would like to…

I just want to thank you so much for your time and your readership. We feel so fortunate to have the Taiwan People’s Food Bank Association as part of our network. It’s just fantastic to just be here and learn more about the amazing culture here in Taiwan and the commitment to achieving the SDGs.

Once the atlas include Taiwan, or if you are translating into Mandarin Chinese, after the next round of members of parliament, maybe it will be time to start some education for the parliamentarians as well.

This is beyond administration. It requires a law change to fit the international norm. This education campaign, I think, is the most important to establish as the new norm of food continuation. I’d love to help those personally, as in recordings and videos, as well as in my official capacity, as in maybe introducing that idea in our annual social entrepreneurship forum or things like that.

Let’s just stay in touch.

Anyway, GFN, they have their annual meeting every year, always in March. Every year, Nancy and I will attend to the meeting, and to learn lots from other worldwide food banks. We are thinking about that.

Actually, lots of things can be learned from other countries, but only two of us there. How could we transform or share our experience or our knowledge from the GFN to share with the local food banks or local public here? I haven’t figured out how I can do that.

Where would that be next March, like physically? Have you determined a location?

In Mexico City.

In Mexico City?

YES, Mexico.

Probably, if the government agency are interested in that, next year, they could also participate in Mexico, so…

Sure. If there’s live streaming, I am sure that most public servants prefer watching the live stream.

I don’t know whether it will be recordings or live streaming.

We do live stream it, and then it, of course, stays…It lives in perpetuity, because the time difference is intense.

I know. Maybe the better way is that, for after you come back, organize a sharing session. Then people, it’s like a flipped classroom. People will be required to see through the playlist, maybe you curate.

Like, “You must watch those three talks before coming.” Then we can just provide for free the space of the Social Innovation Lab, which is free of charge for you to use. Many people use that for this kind of thing.

As long as you, it’s open to the public, and you can say which SDG it correspond to, the venue is free for you to use. You can host, I don’t know, 100 people or more, if needed. Then we make sure that the people have watched this video and came specifically for discussions.

I think that’s usually the better way, as opposed to asking three representative coming to Mexico City, which as you mentioned, it really gets lost in translation. People can’t really go back and start spreading the word without their audience already immersing in themselves a little bit of the context of the conversation.

Brilliant idea.

I’m happy to offer the venue and things like that.

Maybe I can write some text for promotion. I thought, yeah.

Yeah. If you have posters or whatever, you can also send graphic files to me, and I am happy to just put on my office for free advertisement to get people just enrolling.

Really appreciate that you would help us to promote the World Food Day in Taiwan.

Yeah, I’d love to.

We hope that that’s not an only one-day event. We’re going to promote it years, continuous years by years. Maybe five years later, everybody here knows the World Food Day, not just only the Earth Day.

That’s right. I think it’s not exactly not new, it’s just, we don’t know what to do on that day. There’s no immediate call to action, right? Like last year, it’s that our action are the future. That was the theme, but there’s no very easy call to action here locally in Taiwan.

If you can figure out some call to action as part of the message on the market, for example, if people can just subscribe to something and start something. For example, going vegan one day per week, that really took off. It took off very, very well.

It’s something that people can very easily do and say that they are doing. Figure out some call to action like that, I think, is paramount.

Great idea.

Very good advice, I think.

Thank you.

Yes, great. I want to thank you so much. I just want to be mindful of your time. [laughs]

No, it’s fine.

It’s a real pleasure. I look forward to staying in touch and following your amazing work.

Thank you.

Have fun in Addis.

Yeah, very much so. Looking forward to it.

One last request. Can I take photo?

Yeah, of course, of course.

Oh, yes.