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2019-09-29, First come, first to choose!



The Teach North Korean Refugees Global Education Center held its 96th Language Matching session on Sunday, September 29, 2019.


It was one of our biggest sessions, with almost 40 people squeezed into our small room, with some of our volunteer tutors sitting on the floor during the session. We are accepting donations so we can get a bigger office one day (TNKR fundraising page) .

STUDENTS

We had 11 North Korean refugees join yesterday's session.

* Six returnees
* Five newcomers

It means we have now had 429 North Korean refugees join TNKR since we first began operations in 2013.

Two key features of TNKR are that refugees choose the language helpers they will work with and can choose as many as they want.

On average, refugees chose 3.6 tutors.

Three refugees chose 5 tutors each.
Three refugees chose 4 tutors each.
Three refugees chose 3 tutors each.
One refugee those 2 tutors.
One refugee chose 1 tutor.

Arrival dates of students into South Korea:

2001 (1)
2007 (1)
2009 (2)
2011 (2)
2013 (1)
2014 (1)
2015 (2)
2017 (1)

Our Matching sessions start at 2 PM, we tell students joining a TNKR Matching session not to arrive before 9 AM. I arrived at 7:30 AM, then started listening to college football, waiting for 9 AM. When I opened the door at 8AM, two students were already there, waiting.



Student 1:
* Arrived this morning at 7:50 AM.
* Why? She had previously joined a TNKR Matching session in 2017, arriving at 9:20 AM.. She was incredulous when she learned that she was third in line! The first arrival that day had registered at 1 a.m. Because of that situation, we changed our policy, telling students not to arrive before 9 AM.
* She vowed that no one would arrive before she did, she contacted TNKR co-founder Eunkoo Lee the night before to ask if she could arrive before 9 AM.

Student 2:
* Arrived at 8:20 AM this morning. In her case, she was so eager to join us. When we had the first interview, she couldn't express herself well in English, but it was clear that she was going to try!

When I opened the door at 9:00 a.m., they were both so delighted!

I no longer have to make the point to Eunkoo Lee, who once upon a time believed (as many of her South Korean colleagues did) that refugees were too passive to make decisions on their own.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFaXvG-rSmQ&list=PLn7xtnmarHFo0ddUJrmXFFN6Wd2VyrL9I&index=7

Before we began renting this office, we were using two different locations for the orientation and Matching. We were often limited in how early refugees could arrive because we were using offices controlled by others.


***

VOLUNTEERS

We had almost 60 tutors apply. It means that we had to turn away many great tutors, but hope they will try again next month.

Tutors who come to us are willing to put themselves before students. They must apply, are required to make customized resumes that are for refugees, agree to respect refugee privacy, required to attend an orientation, expected to read our guidebook, then wait to hear if they have been selected for the session.

Nationality/country of tutors (self-identified)

USA 13
Australian 2
Dutch 2
Canadian 1
Mexican 1

Cancellations

Ukranian 1

REFUGEE SELECTIONS














FUNDRAISING

Of the 19 tutors who joined, 15 of them donated or fundraised. As we have learned, most tutors prefer to donate rather than engage in fundraising, but we prefer the opposite. With the fundraisers, when volunteers and fans try, they can inform more people about us, and typically raise more money.

4 volunteers engaged in fundraising, averaging 99,000 won each.
11 volunteers made donations, average 45,000 won each.

https://give.lovetnkr.com/en/fundraisers/Study-Spaces-for-English-Tutoring
https://give.lovetnkr.com/en/fundraisers/Support-North-Korean-Refugees-Learn-English
https://give.lovetnkr.com/en/fundraisers/Tutor-North-Korean-refugees-Eat-live-octopus
https://give.lovetnkr.com/en/fundraisers/Help-North-Korean-Refugees-11

To thank the volunteers for fundraising and donations, we gave TNKR pens to everyone, mugs to donors and fundraisers, and copies of Jang Jin-sung's book "Dear Leader" to everyone who reached the TNKR Fan level.



 STAFF AND SUPPORT

Academic Team

Janice Kim, Academic Coordinator. She had the challenge of processing applications from almost 60 people. Some applicants read every message in detail, some skim over messages and ask about questions already answered in messages, and some people seem to go into witness protection programs after submitting their resumes. She joined TNKR as a volunteer tutor in July 2017.

Daniel Cashmar, Volunteer Advisor. He assisted with both orientation sessions and has put together a Guidebook for volunteers to get them get prepared for the Matching session and for being tutors in TNKR. He joined TNKR in September 2015 as a volunteer tutor.

Youngjoo Yoo, Office Project Manager: Her main role yesterday was to input information about yesterday's session. She joined TNKR as a volunteer tutor in August 2018, she manages our Naver blog, is a moderator of our Facebook page, and translates many documents.

Sarah Swanner, Outreach Coordinator. She joined TNKR in June of this year as a volunteer tutor and is now assisting TNKR in numerous ways.

There were also others who helped out who were not in the room yesterday, such as Jackie Cole, who makes original flyers and manages our Instagram account, Eben Appleton, who posts every TNKR activity on Facebook and is our number 1 cheerleader, Georgene Zaydell and Reinier van Hofslot who are a close second when it comes to sharing our posts.

Eunkoo Lee and Casey Lartigue, co-Founders. Everything else.


Volunteer Consultant

Additionally, Fred Byeon held an Ethics and Advocacy Workshop discussing approaches to engaging North Korean refugees in a professional way.



COMING UP

Our next Orientation Weekend will be October 19-20, the next Matching (invitation only) will be October 27.
https://lovetnkr.org/event/tnkr-orientation-weekend-october2019/

This part of the program focuses on English tutoring, it is a safe zone for refugees to focus on English, not telling their stories or talking about North Korea.

If you would like to engage in Small Group Discussion with North Korean refugees, then join our Small Group Discussion series.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/i-am-from-north-korea-small-group-discussion-tickets-73944394675

Support TNKR:
https://give.lovetnkr.com/en/refugees

Naver translation by Youngjoo Yoo: https://blog.naver.com/tnkr21/221671645860

2021 update: We have put the tutoring project on hold, we hope to resume it one day. https://give.lovetnkr.com/Tutor-NK-refugees

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