Taiwan Tech’s USR project, “Co-Growth Spark: Walking Beside Me, Becoming My Partner”, focuses on incubating locally characteristic curricula as its core strategy that reflects the context of the community. It has a long-term commitment to specific areas, collaborating with Municipal Xiaolin Elementary School for 14 years and Dong’ao Elementary School and Municipal Chishang Junior High School for 7 years each. Participants engage in block courses and a special 1-credit social practice course at Taiwan Tech, with students averaging 19.7 months of deep and sustained involvement.

In the 2023 Tongmen Elementary School summer camp, Yu-Jie Huang participated in the sports day with the children.

Project leader Assistant Professor Ying Wang stated that long-term and stable development symbolizes sustainability, which is crucial for both rural students and university students. Therefore, the courses we designed have high connectivity and progressive elements, promoting mutual growth between the project and the partner schools. Looking back 14 years, the project started with summer camps and gradually expanded to a summer school across all subjects, but it was still a short-term, sporadic model. Now, the curriculum has developed into a systematic learning experience that spans the academic year, achieving coherent and continuous instructional design. Each collaboration has laid a solid foundation for the initial stages and provided greater prospects for future development.

In the 2024 Municipal Xiaolin Elementary School summer camp, Taiwan Tech project leader Ying Wang, Taiwan Tech students, international students, and the children of Municipal Xiaolin Elementary School engaged in field activities together.

The Co-Growth Spark project collaborates with six elementary and junior high schools, including the fifth consecutive year of implementing problem-based learning (PBL) courses with Municipal Chishang Junior High School. This approach transforms local community issues into meaningful maker weekends. In 2024, the project held a “One-Day University Student” event, guiding children to Taipei for hands-on lab experiences.

At Tongmen Elementary School, a new CSR partnership with the Taiwan Power Company's Eastern Power Plant was established to design green energy-themed courses. At Dong'ao Elementary School, a 10-day summer camp was organized, with 27 students from 11 different nationalities and indigenous groups participating, highlighting the concept of “the more local, the more international”. For Dashu Elementary School and Municipal Xiaolin Elementary School, successful cross-school collaborative learning was implemented, where Dashu students visited Xiaolin and vice versa. This included joint presentations of their outcomes, and the summer camp was conducted in a hybrid format (online, in-person, and offline).

In the 2023 Tongmen Elementary School summer camp, Malawian volunteer student Astro conducted a soccer class.

In the 2023 Tongmen Elementary School summer camp, the mBot technology exploration course was held to cultivate students’ logical thinking skills.

In 2022, Yu-Jie Huang, who was still studying at Taiwan Tech, participated in the Co-Growth Spark project. In her first year, she proposed an innovative lesson plan that used food delivery platforms to teach programming to children. However, upon arriving in Hualien, she realized that there were no delivery platforms in the area, which meant this was not a relatable daily experience for the local children. This experience deeply made her aware of the urban-rural differences. After graduating in 2023, she co-founded a company with two partners who also participated in the project, focusing on creating an English-speaking environment in Tongmen Elementary School.

Yu-Jie Huang reflected, “When we initially designed the lesson plan based on the food delivery platform theme, we assumed the children would have experience using such platforms and anticipated their surprise when revealing the lesson topic. However, even though some children lacked life experiences related to the teaching content, we quickly adjusted for a short time by incorporating familiar ingredients and items into the delivery game. The cards used in the game presented words in bilingual languages, allowing children to learn programming while also grasping how delivery platforms work and relevant English vocabulary. This experience later helped me in my entrepreneurial journey in bilingual science teaching, guiding young students to explore the principles of scientific experiments through game-based learning, and constantly reminding me of the importance of connecting fun with life experiences.

From 2023 to the end of August 2024, the third phase of the Co-Growth Spark project hosted 16 exchange activities, involving 675 students. On the university side, professional courses, field management, themed activities, and CSR collaborations successfully enhanced students' interdisciplinary practical skills, strengthened local identity and international perspectives among children, and established a sustainable cooperative model, showcasing the results of collective wisdom and efforts.

In 2024, the “One-Day University Student” event at Municipal Chishang Junior High School included light and shadow experiments conducted at the Science Education Center.