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Eunhee Park and TNKR, growing together

It was so moving to read Eunhee's comments about our meeting yesterday! They were almost as moving as the meeting itself!


Less than four years later, she was on the TEDx stage giving a speech in English! You can imagine my feeling, as MC of the event, handing off the microphone to her, knowing how far she had come in such a short time.

Every time she speaks about TNKR, she moves our hearts. We can remember when she first started with us in April 2015, hiding her face, refusing to be in photographs, not using her name.

She went through an incredible change, which she attributes to TNKR. Now we can discuss deeper points about various issues, headache free discussions! She gives us credit, but of course it is her burning drive to do something with her freedom.

Yesterday was intended to be a feedback session about TNKR. She has studied in all three tracks, also participated in activities with other organizations so she has some perspective.

TNKR is based on understanding how students are doing in the program so we can keep growing organically and responding to their individual needs. When we say that TNKR is learner-centered, we really mean it. As I told TNKR co-founder Eunkoo Lee back in 2013 when we debating if and how we should develop this activity: There is no reason for us to benchmark what other organizations are doing. We will talk to the refugees directly and build a culture of transparency so tutors will act professionally and everyone will keep us updated so we can make something truly special out of this. It hasn't always played out that way, but we keep heading in that direction, ignoring the various suggestions that we do other things refugees aren't asking us to do or don't fit within the scope of our mission.

Yesterday was intended to be a feedback session with Eunhee, a thoughtful lady who has been in TNKR for five years.

The meeting was much more than that. It was a reminder of how far she has come in such a short time, and also how far TNKR has come during that time. When she first joined us at the A-B-C level in 2015, TNKR's "office" was my desk at the Freedom Factory office. We were shuttling between different locations of different organizations to use their space. 

Later that year, we began renting space in the Bitcoin office. We had numerous discussions then with Eunhee about how she could advantage of the opportunity presented by TNKR and how she could avoid wasting the freedom she had to escape to (unlike other people who are born free and take it for granted).

One day she will be an international speaker when conditions are right for that again or perhaps have her own non-profit organization. The day could come that whichever cause she takes up, she will have the opportunity as we have had to reflect (as we did yesterday) on others who have been inspired or done something special with their lives.

* * *

You can read previous things she has said about TNKR, at this fundraiser she set up.

Her metamorphosis.

Her TEDx Talk.

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