Y Stories in January

Jan 2nd

New Year’s Worship

Greeting the year of 2012, Seoul YWCA had a New Year’s worship. After listening to the sermon “You Are the Possibility. When?” delivered by Pastor, Park Young Joo of Jamshil Meery Year Church, board members and staffs blessed each other for a Happy New Year.

Jan 5th to 26th

Garak: Improving Learning Ability Program

Garak Social Welfare Center had a program for elementary school students to help them improve learning abilities based on their individual characteristic type.

Jan 10th to 19th

Yeoungdeungpo: Special Lectures for Children

Yeoungdeungpo Women Resources Development Center held special lectures including ‘Making Green Newspapers’, ‘English&Art’, ‘Fun History’ and ‘Self-Directed Learning’ for children during their winter break.

Jan 13th

Friday Worship with a Cinema
The New Year’s first Friday worship for office workers around Myeongdong area was held with watching movie, led by Missionary Hwang Sung Ghil of Dream Church. It was a joyful time full of laughter and grace, watching the movie ‘Turtles Swim Faster than Expected, (2005)’ together.

Jan 16-18th

Gangnam: White Ski Camp

Meeting their winter vacation, 91 elementary school kids participated in three-day ski camp of Gangnam Youth Center. At Sungwoo Resort located in Hwoengsung, Gangwon Province, they had sky lessons on various levels and also enjoyed freestyle sky, swimming and recreation time.

Jan 18th

Bongcheon: ‘Hope Ondol’ Program on winter

Bongcheon Social Welfare Center had a winter program called ‘Hope Ondol’. People from grassroots organizations and Hyundai HCN made New Year’s dumplings with senior citizens who live alone.

Jan 19th

Bongcheon: Sharing New Year's Soup of Love

Bongcheon Social Welfare Center held an event sharing New Year’s soup called 'Tteokguk' with senior citizens who live alone. The atmosphere was full of abundance of foods and loves.

Jan 19th

Seongdong: Culture Exploration Team, ‘Guseok Guseok(every nook and cranny)’

Culture Exploration Team ‘Guseok Guseok’ of Seongdong Youth Center had a meaningful time finding hidden historical places in Seoul such as Cheongwadae, the Korean presidential residence and Gwanghwamun area, and learned about achievements of King Sejong and Admiral Yi Sun-Shin.

Dreaming for Africa

From Jan 5th to Jan 22th, 19 college students and their group leaders & staffs headed to Tanzania to offer IT education to Tanzanian university students as volunteers.

Connection with Tanzania YWCA

This year, add to visiting universities, vocational schools and kindergartens, we conducted IT education for a week to deepen relations with Tanzania YWCA. About 80 people participated in this program; from teenagers who are off school to women in their 30s. Having a completion ceremony together and exchanging cultures, we cemented our friendship with Tanzania YWCA. Also, we delivered our 'Pink Box'(program to support women's sanitary items) in order to raise awareness and need of supports for health and hygiene of Tanzanian women and girls. Tanzania Y is mainly concentrating on preventing violence on women and AIDS, so relatively youth programs are not very activated. They thanked Seoul Y that, by experiencing Seoul Y's passion through this IT volunteer program, they got will and vision for youth education. From now on, Seoul Y and Tanzania Y are planning to work together with various supporting programs.

The 3rd Visit, Reunion with the students

Since it was our 3rd visit to Umzumbe University, Tegeta vocational school and Rapiki kindergarten, systematic activities were possible based on positive local awareness of Seoul Y's volunteer. The greatest advantage of this program might be the stable relations and confidence-building brought by continuous effort. We hope our international volunteering would be the opportunity to build precious relationship with other countries by planning for the future together and helping them stand up on their own, not just visiting there as a one-off event. We remember a time when we grew up receiving assistance from international YWCAs. Now, we are grateful that we have come to be able to embrace world Y in need, and feel a sense of mission towards the world.

We would like to thank our members who gave their full material and emotional support and prayed for the Tanzania IT volunteer.

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