Seoul YWCA

 There was a meaningful event on the 8th December after SeoulYWCA 95th anniversary worship. In order to commemorate the donors love for SeoulYWCA since 2008 upto this year.     All the board of directors and committee members got together to congratulated on opening the donor wall. SeoulYWCA really appreciates for the warm-hearted donors and will memorize the precious names forever.

  November 11th, when the cold wind was blown in Myeongdong street, SeoulYWCA's Y-teens bravely face the weather for doing good. They sold second-hand clothes to raise funds for Y-teen scholarship. Thirty six teen members got together and divided roles and responsibility.     Although it was short four-hour flea marker, many people showed their interest and bought some clothes with an inexpensive prices. Y-teens totally collected about 200 US dollars from this events and they were proud of their positive activity. 

Fostering professional pet manager                   Yeongdeungpo Women Resources Development Center is running a professional pet manager consultant class from September. Now 19 members are learning the contents and they practiced at the Pet Culture Center in Yangjae-dong. When they graduate in November 9th, Yeongdeungpo Women Center provide job-seeking consulting.      Youth rights festival                           Seongdong Youth Center Youth Committee named Making Beautiful World, participated '2017 Youth Rights Festival' to run a campaign booth. They made a contribution to increase youth labor rights by addressing unfair labor issues on young people when they do a part time job.      

Seoul YWCA hosted a gala dinner on the beautiful fall evening, November 2nd for fundraising. Dorothea, a crossover band opened the event with violin, oboe, gayageom(Korean traditional string instrument).   General Secretary  Ms.Sunhee Yang presented the values Seoul YWCA is pursuing, for example, Y+=Empowering girls through entrepreneurship education. W+=Projects that strengthening disadvantaged women's ability. S+= Accelerating women's citizenship movement.   Seoul YWCA is going to spend the supporters' grateful funds on the projects make a positive difference in the world and asked all the participants in the gala dinner to be the Peace Bridges. Around 120 people joined the dinner and had a wonderful night with valuable speeches and networking. Seoul YWCA is really thankful for the supporters.

  Christian Gender Equality Study Group   October 25th Women's Movement Department hosted Christian Gender Equality Study session. Professor Beak So Young(Ewha Women's University, Christianity Department) was invited to talk about Gender Equality based on Christianity. Seoul YWCA's committee members and staffs participated in this study group. This study group will play an important role to advance Seoul YWCA's women's movement campaigns.     Creating Community Hero Nowon Women Resources Dvelopment Center ran 12 sessions of 'Creating Community Hero' class from September to October. 20 community members joined this class and they learned social entrepreneurship to solve the issues in their community.    

  It's fall in Korea and we are enjoying the just appropriate weather and clear sky. On the October 19th, Seoul YWCA hosted Big Flea Market at the YWCA parking lot.   A variety of goods and food were displayed everywhere in the market, they were relatively inexpensive. The special section of this year was low carbon agricultural products from local farmers. They sold pears, apples, cherry tomatoes, corns, rice that were cultivated by low carbon technology.  Also there were a lot of second-hand products from YWCA members. They looked still useful and very very cheap. All the profits are going to do good public programs in Seoul YWCA. We would like to thank all the participants to the Seoul YWCA's Big Flea Market. #seoulywca

    Particiaption in the Social Welfare Expo     Garak social welfare center participated in the National Social Welfare Expo in Olympic Park on the September 7th. Garak center demonstrated "Happy Inconvenience Movement(Energy Saving campaign)", "making natural mist for face", "protecting neighbors". This helped the community members know about Garak center and it was able to promote social activities Garak Center is doing.                    Teenager Music Festival Seongdong Youth Center hosted teenager music festival, "Radiate Youthfulness: Sing a Youth" on the September 2nd in the Wangsipli Square. 12 teams played divers music and showed their talent.        

  Gangnam Youth Center hosted  "Peaceful Gender Equality Campaign" for about 400 youth in the COEX Square on the September 16th. Participants had a look on cases of gender inequality in media like entertainment show, commercial, news, movies. They promised to take actions to realize gender equality in their daily life through this event.         

    Seoul YWCA hosted a movie talk event with Seoul Y members. The movie <GMO OMG> tells us we are unwittingly experimented by GMOs whose risks and effects to our health and the environment are unknown. After the movie, Ms. Park Jun Kyeong working for Han Sal Lim Life Co-op was invited to talk about staus quo of GMO in Korea and do Q&A session regarding GMOs.             

The picturesque photo was taken in the picnic of Y-teens on the 2nd September. Seoul's sky was clear and high enough for the Y-teens enjoyed the picnic. They got together to have group activity about peacebuilding. Since some of them met each other for the first time, so they needed icebreaking first. And they had a meal altogether and had a quiz game.       The purpose of this meeting was making good relationship among Y-teen members. Seoul YWCA hopes the Y-teens have more feelings of peace and YWCA.

Gangnam Youth Center implemented a variety of volunteering activities with the member students during the summer vacation in July and August. They visited a center for senior citizens and taught elementary school students. The volunteers experienced a community spirit through these activities.

Nowon Women Resources Development Center hosted a meeting for women's job with Seoul Metropolitan Government Council members(Oh seong rok, Lew cheong) on the July 20th and August 28th. Fifteen women resource development center's executive chiefs also participated in this meeting and shared opinions on each center's characteristic, each district's business, vision for raising women's employment, making better treatment in workplaces.

Korea Internet Newspaper Association(KINA) visited Seoul YWCA building to sign an MOU on August 29th.  KINA is one of the five large press corporations, leading new media trend in Korea. They promised to implement value sharing activities together.

 It is surprising that only Koreans don't have suffrage for the youth  who are 18 years old among OECD countries. Many YWCA braches in Korea are campaigning all the youth citizen above 18 must have political rights. In this regard, YWCA youth club called Y-Teen got together and arranged a flashmob in Chenggye Squre to address Korean youth above 18 must have a right to vote. There's a video of their flashmob in the end of this post.       Please click here to watch the video

      Seoul YWCA is running "Saving Energy Project in Church". Last weekend, August 12th, Seoul YWCA visits Onsarang Church located in Dongjakgu. Children coming to the church participated in the saving energy class.       An environment lecturer Ms. Kim Mi Kyung taught about global warming and why it is so important to save energy and how we can save energy.   As a way of save energy, they learned how to make solar panel light with Ms.Kim. It was surprising that the lights are on even without any battery. They made their mind to save energy by using these kind of solar energy and concern more about the resources they are using in their daily life.    

Seoul YWCA Youth Program team hosted Youth Peace Camp in Vladivostok.  Deportation of Koreans in the Soviet Union , originally conceived in 1926, initiated in 1930, and carried through in 1937, was the first  mass transfer  of an entire nationality in the  Soviet Union .    Almost the entire Soviet population of  ethnic Koreans  (171,781 persons) were  forcefully moved  from the  Russian Far East  to unpopulated areas of the  Kazakh SSR  and the  Uzbek SSR  in October 1937.   The official reason for the deportation was to stem "the penetration of the Japanese espionage into the Far Eastern Krai", as Koreans were at the time subjects of the  Japan , which was hostile to the Soviet Union. Estimates based on population statistics suggest that 40,000 deported Koreans died in 1937 and 1938 from starvation, exposure and difficulties adapting to their new environment. So this time YWCA youth mem...

Seoul YWCA opens an application process to find suitable university students in Korea. Seoul YWCA and Volunteering Matters develop and deliver high impact volunteer-led solutions across the UK in response to some of the most difficult challenges facing individuals and their communities today. We engage more than 30,000 volunteers and 90,000 beneficiaries every year through 180 active programmes across the UK. If you want to be a volunteer and gain English skills, new experiences, as well as friendship in UK, please contact I-friend@seoulywca.or.kr asap. The due date is September 20th, 2017.  

The feeling that dominated my mind until the first day was worry rather than expectation. Our preparation was not enough on every aspect. But, my colleagues looked so happy and relaxed even though we were not prepared and had to teach the class tomorrow. That made me worried so much. However, when the first class had started, my thought changed completely. Still, there were a lot of insufficiencies in our classes. Although Kits for the class were not enough and student’s academic achievement was different from what we had expected, student liked us as ourselves regardless of the poor teaching. Though we made a mistake, they accepted and loved it as part of ourselves. Only then, I realized that I am the one who can’t really adjust in Tanzania, not our team members. There were a lot of problems while we had worked in Tanzania. There were conflicts among colleagues and sometimes miscommunication with local people caused some misunderstanding and conflicts. However, we tried to u...

  Seoul YWCA had successfully done World Friends Korea volunteering service in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania during 12th July ~ 25th July, 2017. The volunteers are composed of divers university students throughout the domestic Korea and they were mainly majored in information technology. The volunteer activities were to teach kids in St. Augustine primary school and to teach MS Excel, Word, Powerpoint at the computer classes in YWCA Dar es Salaam Branch. Korean students learned global citizenship through this program, and they will take action to make a better world after this activity.       

  "We are SESE!" SESE refers to Save Energy Save Earth which is a small club name Korea Energy Agency organized. They are composed of 36 middle and high school students. June 17th, Saturday, Seoul YWCA and the SESE collaborated to campaign on the Myeongdong street for saving energy. The citizens in Myeongdong participated in the campaign to learn about renewable energy, how to save energy in the peak season, and write a note their resolution to save energy in their home.   This campaign had run for three hours under the scorching sunshine. All the youths were enjoyed the campaign and make up their mind to save energy throughout a year!

Seoul YWCA staffs participated in a training session to learn more about GMO. “Genetically Engineered Foods”, “Genetically modified organisms,” or GMOs, are organisms that have been created through application of transgenic, gene-splicing techniques that are part of biotechnology. These transgenic methods for moving genes around are also called “genetic engineering,” or GE.       This relatively new science allows DNA (genetic material) from one species to be transferred into another species, creating transgenic organisms with combinations of genes from plants, animals, bacteria, and even viral gene pools. The mixing of genes from different species that have never shared genes in the past is what makes GMOs and GE crops so unique. It is impossible to create such transgenic organisms through traditional crossbreeding methods.        In South Korea, labeling GMO law is not enacted yet, so many citizens don't care about what GMO i...

    Gangnam Youth Center organized a global citizenship education to understand India and Turkey on 18th May. 51 Chengdam middle school students participated in this class and they cooked nann, curry, Menemen(Turkish home breakfast) with local instructors.

Seoul YWCA campaigned Equal Pay for Equal Work on 25th May. They spoke out the large gap between women and men's wage for equal work and received signatures to designate "Equal Pay for Equal Work Day"

Seoul YWCA has been claiming Korean government should take legal measures to label GMO food. There's a chance that GMO food harms human health, so customers should be able to choose GMO or Non-GMO food for what they eat. Now South Korea is No.1 GMO importing country in the world, however, current legislation doesn't force the industry to label GMO on soy bean sauce, frying oil, instant noodles.

      Seoul YWCA is monitoring a diversity of media tools whether or not it contains gender discrimination contents. Last April, the monitor members looked through 79 children TV shows to found out cases violate gender equality. A lady character doll was worried and said "Oh I gained 0.33kg than yesterday!" -> This pictures that women are too much concerned about how to be looked by other. This scene also encourages lookism. Mon does house chores and Dad makes money from work. -> This may make children to grow traditional gender roles stereotype.