Events

Do you dream of making an impact to the world with socially responsible, innovative solutions? Would you like to help strengthen Taiwan?

Snowball together with Women in IoT are pleased to invite you to the virtual Snowball Online Hackathon: Impact through consumer behavior!

Back in 2019, the well-known fruit tea shop Yi-Fang kowtowed to Beijing by swearing its support for the tattered “one country, two systems” framework, prompting many Taiwanese to blame the company and threaten a boycott. In solidarity with pro-freedom protestors in HK, many Taiwanese redirected their spending to drink shops more aligned with their values.

A key part of Snowball’s mission is to empower people to have an impact on freedoms in Asia through our collective financial decisions. So, we invite you to brainstorm with us how to create the resources and products to “Keep It In Taiwan” and “promote the usage of Taiwanese products and services,” so more money goes to Taiwan and less money goes to authoritarian regimes, like China.

No matter your background or profession, we invite you to join us – register your team or sign up on your own and we will help you match with others. Whether you are a student, developer, marketing expert, project manager, business guru, researcher, academic, activist, or just a concerned citizen, Snowball Online Hackathon is waiting for you!

So what does Xinjiang cotton have to do with us? Are we unwittingly wearing clothing produced by forced labor of Uyghurs in Xinjiang? 😳 Do we need to take responsibility for the ‘Dirty Cotton’ hand-picked by people working against their will? 🔥 China started a state-run social media campaign to ban these brands, calling on the West to stop bullying the country and denying there is forced labor in Xinjiang. The mounting evidence shows as many as two million Uyghurs are kept in internment camps. As a consumer, do we need to stand with these fashion giants with their seemingly bold move?

We invited our speaker, Wu’er Kaixi! A longtime human rights and democracy activist for Uyghur ethnicity, also one of the Chinese student leaders in the Tiananmen protests of 1989. Residing in Taiwan, Wu’er Kaixi has been a strong advocate for freedoms and human rights. Lending his voices on Hong Kong’s democracy protests, Wu’er Kaixi is also a well-known observer and political commentator for Taiwan. He is one of the Emeritus board members at Reporters Without Borders, and currently takes the role of the Executive Deputy General Secretary at Taiwan Parliamentary Human Rights Commission.

Event highlights: The story behind Xinjiang

Things are “going bananas” in the Taiwan pineapple market since China abruptly banned the import of the tropical fruit just before the harvest season. The ‘ambush’ act has triggered an island-wide sensation of buying pineapples to support the local farmers, as neighboring country Japan also increased imports of pineapples by nearly 10,000 tons. 🍍🍍🍍
So what the heck is this ‘pineapple war?’🔥🔥 China claimed that it was discovery of mealy bugs in the fruit that prompted the ban, but as many experts pointed out, the rejection was mainly political, rather than agricultural.
👀  Tune in to find out more on the ‘freedom pineapple’ and the inspirational reaction it prompted!