{"id":6907,"date":"2018-05-04T14:10:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-04T18:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/earlhamcollege.wpengine.com\/?p=6907"},"modified":"2021-03-25T14:12:03","modified_gmt":"2021-03-25T18:12:03","slug":"projects-for-peace-4-earlhamites-secure-funding-to-promote-peace-in-korea-nepal-and-indiana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earlham.edu\/news-events\/projects-for-peace-4-earlhamites-secure-funding-to-promote-peace-in-korea-nepal-and-indiana\/","title":{"rendered":"Projects for peace: 4 Earlhamites secure funding to promote peace in Korea, Nepal and Indiana"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Four Earlham students won $10,000 grants for summer peace projects in South Korea, Nepal and Richmond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Gyeongeun \u201cKrystal\u201d Lee, left, and Hyeonji \u201cHannah\u201d Kim.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

While North Korea\u2019s denuclearization, a peace treaty between North and South Korea, and a summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un make the headlines, two Earlham students are working toward peace for North Korean refugees that have escaped to South Korea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gyeongeun \u201cKrystal\u201d Lee \u201920 and Hyeonji \u201cHannah\u201d Kim \u201921 won $10,000 from the Davis Peace Prize for their project entitled \u201cPeace for Adolescent North Korean Refugees in South Korea.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of political oppression and a lack of food and opportunities, North Koreans have steadily landed in South Korea, where they can apply for refugee status and receive help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe government gives them homes, education and job training, so they get put in the system,\u201d says Lee, a math major. \u201cBut when we looked into it, we found that a lot of mental and physical illnesses were caused by a lack of social and cultural adaptation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThinking about all these things, we asked ourselves what could we do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After digging deeper in their research, they found that the adaptation problem was more pronounced for younger refugees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe saw that the responsibility of getting a job helped the adults, but many of the younger refugees were failing to adjust during adolescence,\u201d says Kim, a psychology major. \u201cWhen they become adults, they were still living in the past and were bitter and angry. We decided that we want to help adolescents adjust to society more smoothly, so that they transition more easily into adulthood. We saw this as a real urgent need.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their project aims to create community between South Koreans and the North Korean refugees through educational and social activities spanning five weeks in July and August for both North Korean refugees and South Korean high school-aged students. Workshops include \u201cSocial Interaction,\u201d \u201cConfidence and Communication,\u201d and \u201cWe are Koreans,\u201d which will be lead by Kim and Lee based on their adaptation experiences in attending high schools in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt will cover the difficult nature of societal adaptation and the ways we have found useful to transition and adapt in a new place,\u201d Lee says. \u201cWe have been in the same situation, and we saw how important the social\/cultural part is. We feel like we can relate, and we can share how we overcame. A community or club, anything small would have helped.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kim says that oftentimes South Koreans hold stereotypes and think negatively about all of North Korea, when it\u2019s only the government and its activities that should generate the bad feelings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy mom always says, \u2018What if we had been born in North Korea?\u2019\u201d Lee says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the purposes of our project is that we want the two groups to form a community, and that can\u2019t be accomplished until the South Korean students make changes in their perspectives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBack home we see too many news stories about North Korea, and now it has spread, and I hear about it here in the United States,\u201d Lee says. \u201cWhat about the people of North Korea? I\u2019m concerned about them. World War III is not the solution. Our hope is to break barriers and for people to realize that we are different but also the same. We don\u2019t have to be enemies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

STEM Gender Equality in Nepal and Richmond<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

To be more aware of opportunities while growing up near Richmond, Megan Bennett \u201920 wanted more female role models in the STEM fields, while in Nepal, Anmol Lamichhane \u201918 watched his three sisters and other female students face gender discrimination while pursuing STEM fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Megan Bennett, right, and Anmol Lamichhane.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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To help encourage and facilitate women in STEM, Bennett and Lamichhane won $10,000 from Earlham for their project \u201cBuilding Female STEM Communities in Indiana and Nepal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lamichhane, who has a double major in math and physics, also was a volunteer high school science teacher in Nepal in 2013, and while there, he saw that girls interested in science were often underestimated by their peers and teachers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen the girls expressed opinions in class, their ideas were less valued or deemed less legitimate as their male counterparts,\u201d he says. \u201cI hoped to contribute something that would help balance this inequality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLooking back, I wish I had more of a support system,\u201d says Bennett, an English major and physics minor. \u201cA lot of my teachers and professors were men, and being a first-generation college student, I didn\u2019t know what to expect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their project includes summer camps for high school girls in Richmond, Ind., and in Pokhara, Nepal. Each camp includes two seminars: a STEM Empowerment Seminar (SES), which will highlight the local problem of general inequality in STEM and show resources available to work toward eliminating the discrepancy. A second seminar is entitled Cross-Continental Seminar (CCS) and will connect the girls in the two camps to initiate dialog and eventually create a Global Female STEM Club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SES in Richmond will feature women professors from Earlham and other local women in STEM, and the CCS will show each group the shared obstacles women face in STEM fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through blogs, video calls, handwritten letters and social media, participants will continue to be in touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bennett will organize and oversee a Global Female STEM Club for area high school students including Richmond and Muncie, in the fall, while the LEO Club at Janapriya High School in Pokhara will do the same. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey are two different locations with the same problem, but there are different reasons the problem exists,\u201d Lamichhane says. \u201cWe hope that together, both sides, can work together to tackle the problem globally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Davis Projects for Peace began in 2007 on the occasion of philanthropist Kathryn W. Davis\u2019 100th<\/sup> birthday. Until her death at 106 in 2013, Davis was intent on advancing the cause of peace and sought to motivate tomorrow\u2019s leaders by challenging them to find ways to work to \u201cprepare for peace.\u201d The Davis family continues to honor her legacy by funding Projects for Peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each year Earlham funds an additional summer Peace Project.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Media contact<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Brian Zimmerman<\/strong>
Assistant vice president of strategic communications
<\/em>
Email: zimmebr@earlham.edu
Phone: 765.983.1256<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n