2019/09/21-22 Orientation Weekend

The Teach North Korean Refugees Global Education Center (TNKR) will be holding its 95th or 96th Language Matching session this weekend. I've lost track of how many, there was a time that I could name all of the dates and every volunteer at every session, now I am lucky enough to round up to the correct number of the session.

To get prepared, we hold 1:1 meetings and orientation sessions with North Korean refugees and orientation sessions with volunteers.

The weekend started Saturday morning with TNKR co-founder Eunkoo Lee holding an orientation with four North Korean refugees.

Thanks to Laura Yoo and Tony Hwang for donating books to TNKR, refugees were able to pick through a number of books. We don't really have enough space to accept too many book donations but can accept a limited number of books, especially shortly before orientation and Matching sessions when refugees are visiting.

Then over the weekend, I led two different orientation sessions with volunteer tutors, with assistance from Daniel Cashmar (Volunteer Advisor) both days, TNKR co-founder Eunkoo Lee on Saturday, Sarah Swanner (Outreach Coordinator) on Sunday. We had a total of 40 volunteer applicants attend this past weekend (including three walk-ins who didn't go through the application process).

Overall, we had 50 people apply, which is close to our record. The yield of applicants joining sessions has gone up since we started having Orientation Weekend. It gives our staff more to do, but does result in more of the applicants actually making it to an orientation.

I didn't expect to be there on Sunday, so running two orientations on separate days after already having a busy week can be a bit much. It doesn't matter how busy I am, however, Eunkoo Lee will still insist that I hand out membership cards to people, hand out Starbucks cards, check on this and that, etc.

Fundraisers by North Korean refugees studying in TNKR.
https://lovetnkr.org/meet-the-refugees/

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