At the recently concluded Taiwan Sport Industry Expo, a special group of reporters was working for the organising committee, producing daily news articles, photos and videos. What makes this group of young reporters unique is that they belong to the Student Sports Union (SSU) Media Volunteer Team founded by the Chinese Taipei University Sports Federation (CTUSF).
“During the expo, they produced news reports and videos with good quality,” says Che Hung Lin, the Deputy Director General of the government’s Sports Administration body. “And I believe through their works, we were able to attract more youngsters to visit the sports expo.”
So well-known is the SSU Media Volunteer Team in Chinese Taipei that the Sports Administration specifically asked CTUSF to send an SSU team to cover the expo.
The SSU provides a direct communication channel between the CTUSF and university students. Their main focus is to cover university sports events, write news and feature stories or produce videos about university athletes.
“The reason we founded this volunteer team is quite simple,” explains Ching Yu Tseng, the Secretary General of CTUSF and also the founder of SSU. “If we as a NUSF (National University Sports Federation) do not promote our own events, why should people care about us?”
Tseng came up with the idea to form SSU in 2007. Since then, CTUSF has trained almost 300 students to become member of SSU Media Volunteer Team.
“We recruit university students who have a passion for sports, and provide them training courses like news writing, video editing and marketing,” Tseng tells FISU about the programme.
CTUSF views the SSU team as pivots to promote university sports. “We recruit these students not just for writing sports news, but also to act as a medium for us to communicate directly with the young generation,” adds Tseng.
However, forming a student media volunteer team is not as simple as it may seem. Especially given the fact that SSU members are from different universities and from different parts of Taiwan; and many of them are not even journalism majors! Therefore, the training courses are crucial to improve their news writing and interview skills, and CTUSF also puts a lot of effort into SSU’s team building.
“Our goal is to help these students step out of their comfort zone, to work in groups and learn new skills, and to explore the world of sports together,” says Polly Wei, the supervisor of SSU and also the Deputy Chief of CTUSF Marketing department.
To achieve this goal, Wei holds numerous meetings with SSU members every year, and assigns these volunteers into several different working groups to cover major tournaments or international events.
“I truly learned a lot by executing these projects,” says Hong-Rui Tseng, a current SSU member. He joined SSU because of his love for baseball, but now he is able to cover several different sports. “At first, I didn’t even know how to write a news report, but now I have published a great bunch of stories and videos. My experience in SSU has also helped me set my career path in the sports communication industry.”
With years of development, SSU has become a brand to promote university sports. Starting from posting news reports on its official website, now SSU also provides news videos and live streams of matches on its YouTube channel. Currently, SSU has around 150,000 followers on its Facebook fan page. The reputation of SSU has also helped these student journalists to find more professional opportunities to cover news beyond the realm of university sport.
Over more than a decade, SSU has never dropped pace in developing the programme. Heading towards the future, CTUSF’s secretary general Ching Yu Tseng hopes SSU can produce its own TV programme. He also hopes that SSU can expand to become an international platform, where student volunteers from around the world can learn and work together, and promote university sports.
