This year, my school allowed students to choose from four countries for a volunteer abroad opportunity: Spain, South Africa, Ecuador, and Guatemala. Among these, the country that captured my attention was Guatemala. I understood that Guatemala is a relatively young country with a culture quite unfam
From March 2020, COVID-19 started to spread all over the world. In the beginning, there were only a few cases of COVID-19 in Texas and I was completely unaware of the gravity of the situation. However, the number of people infected in the United States increased rapidly with time and soon masks, han
DESTINY (“DivErSiTy Is NecessitY") is a youth club that deals with issues faced by helping multicultural families (a term for families in which one spouse is Korean and the other is an immigrant) in Korea, with focus given to immigrants from countries such as Bangladesh, India, and Yemen. Because o
My parents always tell me that, when I was a kid, whenever I saw a homeless person asking for money, I would always beg my parents for a dollar or two to give to them. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for the poor. Maybe that is why I grew up to volunteer in so many community activities. Ho
Ever since the pandemic started to spread, all volunteer activities have been suspended indefinitely. However, with the social distancing guidelines being slowly relaxed, I was finally able to take part in an activity to help my community. One particular activity that I was interested in joining was
Every Wednesday since 2018, I have been lucky enough to participate in a program called “Sharing to Learn.” This program gives me and other students the opportunity to teach English to the local Spanish-speaking children of Barcelona. As an aspiring teacher, this was a perfect activity for me to pra
I have enjoyed participating in volunteer activities for a long time. Throughout my freshman year, I used to be in charge of special events in the UNICEF club, and I also cleaned up public parks for my communities. As usual, during my sophomore year, I was searching for volunteering opportunities th
When winter break was approaching last year, I was contemplating either taking a trip with my family or studying for the March SAT at an academic institution. Neither option was particularly appealing, but on a Sunday morning at church, I came across a bulletin about a trip that our church would be
I started volunteering at an organization called “PLUR Seoul,” which feeds the homeless in the downtown area near Seoul Station. When I first started to volunteer, I was the only high school student participating in the program, as the rest of the volunteers were college students, adults, and foreig
An interesting aspect of living in South Korea is our peculiar hermit neighbor to the north. Over the years, over 30,000 of them have escaped to South Korea and they provide a unique opportunity to help people that are struggling to adjust to life in a new country (http://www.koreaherald.com/view.ph
I consider myself a strong advocate of community service and engagement. I like to assist people in need, especially in relation to education. For the past year and a half, I taught mathematics at a school in Rwanda, and it made me want to continue paying the community back even in the United States
This fall, I took another visit to TtukTtakTtukTtak’s charity projects in Wangshimri. TtukTtakTtukTtak is an organization founded by the Urban Design department at Hanyang Cyber University (HYCU) to renovate the homes of the needy families of Seoul. (Think Habitat for Humanity.). I had stopped by an
It is not hard to feel sympathy when we see posters of young patients, barely school children with shaved heads and sunken eyes. But what about their families? What about their younger siblings whose parents are understandably distressed and constantly preoccupied? These were the questions that insp
Back in November of 2018, our school’s 8th grade went on a service trip to ChiangMai, Thailand. It was a week full of fun activities that somehow related back to the topic of serving others before ourselves. Although the trip was months ago, a feeling of acknowledgement sparked my brain on the last
When I first heard that our family was going to visit the Philippines’ Home for Neglected, Orphaned and Abandoned Children, I was very excited. I had heard of the poor children of the Philippines and was more than glad to have been a direct source of help. Moreover, I would finally be able to experi
A majority would concur that community service is voluntary work with the purpose of benefiting other people in a particular area. However, do volunteers take action to help only for the sole purpose of assisting others? Apart from aiding others, community service has a far deeper significance. It i
On January 14th, 2019, I experienced a life changing moment at the Eastern Social Welfare Society. The Eastern Social Welfare Society, also known as ESWS, is a Korean organization that strives to bring joyful lives to hundreds of relinquished babies currently within the care of ESWS. When I visited
I’ve heard from my dad about how he had always used briquettes in his childhood to make himself warm in his house. I personally never understood the hardships that were gone through the process of warming up the house with briquettes. However I recently experienced this process and became able to co
Share Ground is an organization of students that annually raises money to donate to various types of foundations. According to the their website, Share Ground is a non-profit organization run by middle school and high school students from all over South Korea. The name Share Ground originates from t
This past August, I accompanied a community service project hosted by the Hanyang Cyber University’s Urban Design and Architecture called Ttook-ddakTtook-ddak. This project focused on applying the skills and knowledge on architecture learned in classes to helping people in. Typically, the students a