Twenty CNU Students participated in Volunteer work for kids in one of the poorest countries in th world, Cambodia, (Jan. 15th ~ 31th). They organized teams(Korean, English Children's song, Teakwondo and Crafts) in December. When they came back, I contacted some of them and listened to their story.

The On-site School Committee Asked them to do another hour.

    "We were worried that teaching language education might be boring to kids comparing other activity program, so we spent a lot of time making the content interesting when we prepared in Korea." said Jeong Yoon-seob (Dept. of Business Administration), a member of Korean Education. "We aimed to provide good education as well as their interest. For example, with animal puppets, we taught them numbers in English, and Indian song and dancing. We also created easy and brief books for them." said Jeong Ye-eon (Dept. of Biology), a member of English Children's song group.
    Every night they had a time to discuss the direction to improve the education program, and they were able to get an enthusiastic response from the school committee.

How Were Their Education Programs? 

    The first class was in chaos. Children even ate the balloons we gave out for class! We realized that they had no experience in art and crafts lessons, so they had no idea of what to do with the art material. We were a bit embarrassed with this. Learning from our mistakes, we did our best for the children." said Seong Hyun-jick (Dept. of Business Administration), a member of the Crafts group.
    The kids in Cambodia liked traditional games such as one-legged fighting and Ssireum. "we wanted to teach them the foundations of Taekwondo: patience and perseverance. Spiritual lessons, we thought, were more important than just technical lessons."

An Indelible Donation Performance

    On a street which is famous for foreign tourists, they had a dancing performance to raise a fund Children in Angkor Wat. As there were many Korean tourists, we chose famous Korean girl group's songs like <Gee>, <Nobody> and <Diva>.
    "Actually we had no enough time to practice due to the education schedule. Every night, in an empty classroom, we used flashlights to see each other and practiced. On the performance day, we were very thrilled with the audience's good respince. We realized that the recipient is us, not them." said Lee Ji-seon (Dept. of Statistics), a member of English Children's group.
    Twice a year, schools recruit applicants participate in the global volunteer work program during their vacation. Readers can apply for this. If you want more information, check the university homepage.