[Logo Design: Jiyoon Park]
“We all know the facts. I don’t need to tell you about the 5 million Syrians who were exiled from their homes; I don’t need to tell you about the 13.5 million people still trapped within Syria who require immediate humanitarian aid.”
On August 13th, Richard Park, a student at Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts, began his opening speech in front of 51 students gathered inside Banpo Sports Complex. They came together from all over the world, each of them with an international awareness of the Syrian refugee crisis. Determined to spend their summer break doing something meaningful, they embarked on an ambitious project: Project G’Love.
Together, they organized fundraising campaigns in collaboration with the Institute of Asian Culture & Development (IACD), an NGO founded in 1983, and sent hundreds of socks to Syrian refugee camps. To actually place themselves in their shoes, the students decided to run 5km to raise KRW 300,000. A variety of individuals- school teachers, parents, university students- agreed to sponsor the students and over KRW 6,000,000 was raised as a result.
[Photographer: Jungho Park]
<Short interview with the Project Manager, Seungjoo Kim>
Seungjoo Kim was one of the students who took most responsibility in organizing the collaborative effort with IACD and promoting the campaign.
[Photographer: Jungho Park]
Q: How did you come to be passionate about the Syrian refugee crisis?
A: I saw a photo of a child refugee on SNS. That photo had a strangely powerful impact on me and got me interested.
Then I actually met a Syrian guy last year who showed me a video of his refugee family. The video revealed the devastating reality: they were crossing the border from Algeria to Libya on foot. That is what inspired me even more to do what I could to provide aid to the refugees.
Q: Can you reflect back on your emotions when you completed the run?
A: In a word: ‘FINALLY’. I still remember the sense of achievement as I sprinted the last few seconds.
You know, 5km is not an impossible distance and the project itself is not of an impressively large scale, either.
However, with our small, individual efforts put together, we were able to create something that actually brought change to the lives of some Syrian refugees.
Q: What do you think is the value of ‘student-initiated’ activities?
A: During this spring holiday, I wanted to visit a refugee camp but my request was refused only because I was 19. I was upset with the limitations to how much students could help, even if they took the initiative in a bold way. This event here was meaningful because it was the students who actually took on complete responsibility and organized the project from beginning to end. We showed the world that however small, we can still make a difference if we work together.
[Photographer: Jungho Park]
Logically speaking, the significance of student-initiated activities is that it encourages students to strive for bigger changes in the future when they have more influence on society. As we can see by the interview with Seungjoo Kim, it is crucial for students to experience a sense of accomplishment in the early stages of growth when their thoughts and motives are far more flexible so that attention to such international issues will later be recognized as a moral responsibility.
But for now, the students can be proud of what has been accomplished. At this point, we can go back to Richard Park’s opening speech.
“So the next time someone says ‘You’re just a high school student’, be proud in knowing that you at least tried to make a difference.”
Jiyoon Park
Grade 12
Branksome Hall Asia