Help LiNK Win $250,000

[Update: Thanks to all of you who voted, to Sonagi for posting at The Marmot’s Hole, and to the Marmot readers who have now voted LiNK into 6th place. To vote, click the clever logo on the sidebar.]

One of the worthiest organizations trying to help the people of North Korea is Liberty in North Korea, or LiNK, whose President Hannah Song, sends the following request:

LiNK is currently up for a grant from Pepsi for $250,000! In a little over a week we have jumped from 68th place to 7th, but we still have a few weeks of voting to go. We are up against some BIG ideas/groups so we need every vote we can get.

Here’s some information about our project idea: Liberty House. Since the passage of the North Korean Human Rights act in 2004, almost 100 North Korean refugees have resettled here in the US, all over the country. LiNK has helped to resettle fifteen of these refugees and has sought to provide them with supplementary assistance (scholarships, financial aid, tutoring, mentoring, community, etc). With the launch of our recent campaign over the holidays, TheHundred, we anticipate many more refugees making it here to the US over the next year. We have had the tremendous privilege to see refugees as young as 14 and as old as 65 settle down and begin new lives; a couple finally married after waiting years in the underground; two babies born here who are now American citizens; a young woman already in community college studying to be a counselor for other North Korean women who were also sexually trafficked. Although learning a new language and culture are difficult, they are resilient, hard-working and determined to take on this new opportunity. Through our extensive research surveying refugees who have resettled both in the US and in Korea, and observing resettlement centers in South Korea (including Hanawon and other agencies), we realize that the assistance they receive from the government is often not enough. We are taking those learnings to create a unique program here in the US to help refugees acculturate and succeed in their new lives. With this grant we will be able to launch a transitional home that will serve as a safe environment and community for these refugees as they learn English, American culture and history, how to use an ATM and sign-up for a grocery card, apply for their citizenship and find a job, and eventually gain independence to successfully live on their own. We have many of the partnerships already in place – but we lack the funding to move forward.

We are SO close and are very hopeful that we could win this! We need everyone’s vote once a day, every day, until February 28th. Pepsi will award the $250k to the top 2 groups. Signing up only takes a few minutes and voting takes 30 seconds! Please vote here and help us spread the word by tweeting, facebooking, emailing and asking your friends, family and networks.

I did, and it only took about one minute.