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.
I did too. Thank you for this post – knowing about these young people (LINK) makes me proud to be an American – it was OFK from which I first learned about them…do you remeber writing this? “LiNK has also set up a series of clandestine shelters and orphanages in China that are saving North Korean kids from freezing and starving to death at this very moment. A reminder from LiNK:
All travel by the LiNK team is covered by special sponsorships and individual fundraising- no travel fees were taken from LiNK’s funds whatsoever. All donations to LiNK’s Safe Haven operations go straight to the field- in other words, there is no overhead.
They also remind us why they do it:
The LiNK team visited many of the shelters personally, and interviewed refugees in hiding under LiNK’s care, but not before purchasing large amounts of nae-bok, or long underwear, a crucial article of clothing in the below-freezing area, particularly in the mountains. The team also purchased enough thick ski/snow style pants for all refugees under LiNK’s care as well, and toys, crayons and dolls for the orphans.
Many of the refugees the team encountered had heartbreaking stories to share. One woman was sold for only a few hundred dollars, and spent three months essentially in sexual slavery, before she was rescued by a man who was able to purchase her freedom, and connect her with underground networks. Two orphaned young men, aged 21, also shared their stories- siblings and parents dying of hunger, relatives missing. At one point the team compared heights with a member of the LiNK team and the two refugees, all in similar age ranges. The difference was shocking, and tragic. They also spoke of witnessing public executions.
Some of the refugees the team met with have been captured while attempting to cross, or being close to the border. They tell us that standard policy is detention for about 6 months. They also told us that when the same individual was caught three times, they would summarily be executed. The two boys, as well as several others we met with, were at that stage. “I don’t want to be caught again. If I’m sent back, I will be killed.â€
That is the reality there.
LiNK is perpetually in need of funds to carry out its activities. If you can help, please do.
Voted. And will put it on my site.
Can we vote Chicago-style on this (i.e, Vote early, vote often)?
You can vote once per day, so vote again tomorrow.
I think I voted more than once today. I think it let me. I think it did…
Yes, LINK came to my church last year and showed the Seoul Train movie. It solidified my desire to pray and help the refugees- financially through LINK.
I didn’t start becoming obsessed with North Korea until about a year and a half ago. I saw a movie called “Planet B-Boy” (I take hip hop dance classes) and a group of us went to see this documentary on the Annual International Dance Competition for B-Boys. Korea dominated the competition- South Korea that is. However, they showed this footage of a mock dance off between N. Koreans and S. Koreans on the DMZ border (which is really a set from the movie Joint Security Area). The image of the border wouldn’t leave me alone. It looked like the coldest place on earth to me. It chilled me. I started looking up more images on that border and well, the rest is history.
It’s funny that God can use my love for dance to lead me to a burden for N. Korea.
The movie clip that started it all for me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKoXG0RjC7E
LiNK has moved up one place to #6.
You might include a direct link to Pepsi’s Refresh page since *gasp* not everyone uses Facebook.
Has anyone successfully voted without using Facebook? I tried signing up for an account (used the “Join Refresh Everything” in the lower left corner), but still don’t see where or how to vote. HOW to submit one’s vote doesn’t seem to be covered in the FAQ.
Theresa wrote:
Thank you for your post, Theresa. I think drama and stuff are a good tool on the awareness front, to inspire people towards the good cause, to try to get the horrible message across somehow. To make people step out of their comfortable day-to-day lives a bit, and step-by-step start to do SOMEthing for their fellow human beings in the dreadful camps of the DPRK.
Maybe you should try to see how you can maybe use that tool yourself, Theresa, since you’re a dancer. These efforts may seem small, but if everyone would join in then together it might make some kind of a difference. And it might inspire others to do greater things – who knows. Let’s keep working with the abilities we have, and always seek to do more***. People are mutilated and dying in those camps, day after day… They are more or less depending on us!
North Korea seems to be far away from our lives, but if we look at it with our hearts (and setting some of our precious time apart for it) then it’s only a few blocks down the road.
Let’s do our ‘thing’ to get people – including ourselves – CLOSER (in spirit) to the gentle men, women, and children that suffer real hard in the horrible concentration camps of North Korea. (see davidkohannah.wordpress.com for more on this subject)
***) seek to do more, BUT not in a cramp; let no-one TELL you what to do, you will know that yourself; i.e. only you know how far your life can be stretched to do SOMEthing for these beautiful people, and WHAT you think best to contribute; it’s a constant fight with your conscious, honestly seeking God’s will in it, and never forgetting that God is LOVING and ‘the silence voice inside that’s trying to convince you’ rather than a ‘demanding dictator’.
Thanks again for your warm post, Theresa, and I hope my above words do inspire rather than hurt you in some kind of way.
God bless you all!
— David
Hear the cry of the silent people. Hope one day soon they will be free.
Yes, let’s hope that LiNK will become number one, will probably vote too.
250$K is not a massive sum, probably Robert Park’s psychiatric bill, it will hopefully go some way to help out the neediest.
Again, Ernst, see katja’s commenents….they were meant for you.
FYI, if you’re having problems voting, instructions/troubleshooting can be found at http://linkglobal.org/pepsi/blog/?p=186.
Wish Pepsi made it more straightforward but it’s still easy to vote.
Thanks David. Right now I am concentrating on educating myself about the humanitarian crisis. I feel the need to absorb as much information as possible right now. The next step will be to take awareness to the next level- but I want to be as educated as possible on the topic. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area- the most liberal place on earth and I have lots of friends in Berkeley. We may not see eye to eye on the topic of N. Korea which causes me to want to do my homework. In the meantime, I am part of a bible study that focuses on Justice. We are looking to move awareness into action.
MANY THANKS for all your support and help Josh!
Thanks for your explanation and your good heart, Theresa! And I know that when we are being confronted with this horrible situation in North Korea, we first wanna inform ourselves as much as possible to get an idea of what exactly is going on, and to let it penetrate our heart even more – so that it will increase our drive to (help) do something about it.
But you didn’t have to explain yourself to me, or any other person, because no man can judge whether you are doing what you should be doing. Only God can, and He is LOVING and CARING. So, please feel free! God wants us to be free! Out of a free will, challenged by the soft voice of our conscious (made more sensitive by God’s word and spirit), our best actions are born. If something starts to weigh heavy on your conscious then it becomes time to deal with it, no sooner.
God’s word and spirit, together with your conscious are enough judges/teachers to lead you in the right direction. Again, you don’t owe me or anybody any explanation.
God is the only One who can judge you at the end of the ride.
So, in general: Let’s all get more sensitive to God’s loving work inside our hearts (which will drive us to wanna be of more use to the needy of this world), but let’s not take eachother’s temperature with every step we take.
God bless you!
— David
Yes. I had to register by inputting some information, including an email address and a password. When I return to the site, I just enter my email and password when prompted and then vote. Make sure you click on the $250,000 tab at the top to locate LiNK as the default list on the main page is for the $5,000 prize.
I think I registered without Facebook. And I was finally able to put up a post and sidebar link to this worthy effort. Good luck, LiNK.
I think it may just be my computer. Eg, sometimes I have issues with Flash not working properly. Anyway, I am at LiNK’s page (http://www.refresheverything.com/link). I can see in the HTML code a link labeled “Vote for this idea”, but that’s nowhere on the screen for me to click. Same in IE and Firefox (both of which are fully up to date). I log into the site ok (it welcomes me by name in the lower left after logging in). It’s either my computer or maybe the fact that I’m outside the US, but surely someone else would have noticed that by now if that mattered.