Yuan-Chih Lung

Creativity, 2019, Grantee Link >

Yuan-Chih Lung (Mona Lung) is a policy researcher at ACTAsia. She received a CAF grant for Animal Peptalk, a podcast targeted at a young Chinese audience that presents information on animals and animal advocacy from local perspectives, instead of having a Western influence. Mona writes:

Animals are in a position of indifference in the Chinese community and there is no law of animal welfare in China now. Thus, there is a great need to promote animal advocacy in a novel way in line with people’s “Right to Know,” the interests of animals, and the need for sustainable social development.

Yuan-Chih and her team completed their initial goals of recording ten episodes of their podcast, sharing animal advocacy across Asia. Episodes explored topics like: the psychology of animal advocates, the representation of animals in Hollywood, and the role China should play in the climate crisis. They invited multiple experts to speak on their podcasts and at conferences across Asia. They also collaborated with Wonder Films to create seven short films, which can be found on Facebook, Youtube, Peopo (the citizen-journalism platform of PTS Taiwan), and on the popular Chinese video platform bilibili.

Since then, Yuan-Chih and her team have continued to create content and speak about animal advocacy in Asia, and, particularly in the context of COVID-19, have written articles and created short videos about the next steps for Asia and their animals. In September 2020, CAF NAVAB Fellow Vivian Qiu interviewed Yuan-Chih about her work.