Korean Orphange

This weekend, Taylor, Namika, and I went to visit an orphanage near Oncheonjang subway station. Taylor used to be a regular volunteer but it's my first time as well as Namika's. I've been meaning to find something to give back to the community since my time off and this sounded like something definitely worth doing. I had expected to see something similar to what we see in one of those charitable program with the African orphans living in poor conditions...... just in an Asian twist. Boy was I wrong and naive!

We finally arrived to the orphanage after a 20-minute trek on a steep street. The place looks like your average pre-school with a playground and lots of children drawings on the wall. We spoke to a really nice lady, Chris, who is the supervisor and the daughter in-law of the orphanage owner. We found out that this orphanage houses over 70 children ranging from infants to children as old as 8. It is funded by the Korean government but it also receives charitable donations from the community. One major challenge is that they are deciding whether to send the children who are old enough to start school to another orphanage with children similar in age and life stage. On the one hand, it could be more beneficial for these kids to interact with children similar to their age. On the other hand, some argue that it is better to provide a constant living arrangement through a child's life until after adolescence. This is the dilemma Chris and the rest of the orphanage staff is struggling with as there are children reaching this stage next year.

Unfortunately, the orphanage is currently not accepting volunteers because of the recent flu outbreak. It was decided that this was safer for both the children and the volunteers. Understandably so. However, Chris still offered us to spend some time with the children because she didn't want our trip to go to waste. I'm really glad she did. So we went into a playroom filled with 20-25 four to five year-olds. They didn't notice us at first but within minutes we had the more curious children coming up to us saying "hello" or "an-nyeong" in Korean. A couple of them came and reached up to us indicating that they wanted to be held. (How cute) Our next 20 minutes was spent on playing fake sword fights, ball throwing, lego-building, etc. It was neat to just sit there and watch these 20 or so children interact. As Chris described it to us, they are brothers and sisters and the nurses are their moms. One big family! Can you imagine how much fun it would be if you had 20 brothers and sisters to play with growing up? All the kids in the room seemed very happy and healthy and it brought peace to a part of me to think that the children are actually in a pretty decent situation here. These children have a caring staff and other children to play and interact with, which is more than I can say for many other unfortunate kids with neglectful parents. I soon realized that one of the keys in helping these children is not to treat them like some poor kids without parents, but instead try to integrate them into our lives and our community like normal kids.

I hope to be able to spend more time there after the flu scare is over. Chris said to check back in a month or so. This short trip to the orphanage was insightful and rewarding.