Kim Hee-jeong Cooperates in Africa
Kim Hee-jeong, a Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) volunteer in Africa, is passionate about making a difference in people’s lives. In 2014 KOICA offered her a voluntary position in Cameroon, Africa. She took up a position teaching arts and crafts at Ekoudou School.
Ekoudou is a bilingual public Elementary School, situated in the small village of Briqueterie which is in the Yaounde area. Here there are 80-120 students in each class, sitting around small desks, and they work right through the morning until their first break at noon. There is no electricity or running water.
What Kim enjoys most is that she sees everyone becoming happier after her lessons, which brings changes in school life. She is able to offer some variety by teaching drawing, painting and paper folding, which comes as a relief from the daily drilling, where students just take dictation of words. Kim said that art, music and P.E. lessons are neglected in most schools, and would like to be more involved in promoting these kinds of classes.
Having lived in a small part of West Africa for two years and three months, Kim reflects that a little girl from a rural area of Cameroon and a little boy in Seoul do not have an equal chance or number of ways their lives can go, due to social, historical and global positioning.
Cameroon receives aid from many countries, some of which are things that are being recycled. She says it is not difficult to see Korean products around her. In addition to 30-year-old cars, and low cost agricultural products, she has seen red devil T-shirts from the 2002 Korean World Cup, used Korean cell-phones and Korean Hagwon school-bags and hats. Additionally, Cameroon has Samsung and LG products.
Her journey into partnership action started several years ago. Within a decade of the May 18 Democratic Uprising in 1980, she started elementary school in Gwangju. She became aware of the May 18 Spirit in the 1990s when she was a teenager, as it took 10 years for this Uprising to be recognized and valued. She stated as a child living in the May 18 era, the people outside of Gwangju did not recognize the tragedy that had occurred, which made the people of Gwangju frustrated. She gained first-hand knowledge of how to successfully deal with this tragedy and process what had happened to her as a local citizen of Gwangju.
Kim became involved in The May 18 Memorial Foundation in Gwangju, where she volunteered for four years. There she worked with others to gain international cooperation and solidarity action for like-minded organizations and groups. Kim also worked with the Solidarity Team that helped organize the Gwangju Asia Forum and The May 18 Academy. The latter program functions to train activists and human rights defenders so they are best able to share with others through education and conversations. In addition to her work there, Kim helped award the Gwangju Prize for Human Rights.
What she found most rewarding was meeting diverse groups of people along the way. She befriended citizens of Iraq, Israel and Palestine who are working towards establishing and preserving peace, groups from Cambodia and Thailand who are working for educational rights and ethnic minorities, and people from Afghanistan who are working for women’s rights and democracy. Additionally, she enjoyed meeting the Gwangju Prize for Human Rights laureates, such as Malalai Joya. These people are all inspirations on how she should devote her experiences and knowledge to society.
Kim believes in making a difference in Cameroon and wants to do that by being a local leader, where she can observe what needs there are, and work towards meeting them by not just looking in from the outside or visiting briefly. In the meantime she would like to see more freedom of expression implemented in Cameroon, instead of a rigid hierarchical structure. Kim coordinated a mural painting project in the country at the National Emergency Center during 2014 and 2015. In the future, Kim would like to see more of the world, study and write a book.
If you would like to email Kim or donate elementary English or French books that the school does not currently have but needs, she can be contacted by emailing: soyheejeong@gmail.com