The buttery sweet smell of pies baking in an oven is not a common aroma to encounter when walking into an apartment in South Korea. Convection ovens are not a staple appliance in the country’s kitchens so it may sound absurd that a dozen or so women in the small town of Icheon City, an hour southeast of Seoul, decided to host a bake sale in order to raise money to send a young woman through her final year of university.
The fundraiser was for Rose, a young woman living in Uganda with big ambitions and an aptitude to learn, but the misfortune of coming from a place ravaged by war and human rights violations. Rose was born in Nebbi, a tiny village in the north of Uganda. Her school was nothing more than a foundation without walls.
How Rose formed relations with a handful of English teachers in a small town in Korea occurred three years ago when she met Holly Dagnan, a then twenty-two year old graduate from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Before Holly became an English teacher in Korea, she spent the summer working at a restaurant saving money to fulfil a long awaited trip to Uganda. She spent much of her undergraduate studies following the conflicts in Uganda and always knew it was a country she needed to see firsthand.
When she had saved enough to go, she and three other classmates made the trip to the African country where she spent two months interning in parliament. On a trip to the town of Nebbi, she met a skinny young woman in a blue dress whom she would later become very acquainted with. Holly remembers Rose being extremely timid, not well spoken, and barely able to maintain eye contact.
“I think she was nervous to meet us, maybe she felt intimidated,” says Holly.
When Holly discovered Rose had gotten accepted into Mokono University but did not have the funds to attend, Holly made a call to her parents back in Tennessee and started working out a financial plan to pay for Rose’s education.
“I felt very strongly about education and its role within a society, especially one that had been disrupted a great deal,” says Holly. “There are many people in the north of the country living in small villages… And whole generations grew up with no knowledge of how to harvest their own crops, how to run a business, computer skills, all those things. And for someone from the north to be qualified for a college program but not be able to go really weighed deeply on me.”
With the help of practically a stranger, Rose started her first day at Mokono University in the fall of 2009. Her choice of major was developmental studies.
“Her decision for study was really important because she could give back to her community and help develop the north so it can be on equal standing as the south,” says Holly. “I think change has to come from within a country, as well as development, in order to do that you have to educate the locals.”
However, with the state of the economy and shifting plans for the Dagnans, they had less money available to send Rose through her last year of university. When some of the English teachers heard about this cause, they jumped on the chance to help.
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On a cool fall evening, in the small city of Icheon, a small group of women who find citizenship from all around the globe came together in a second floor apartment carrying every toaster oven they could put their hands on, intent on spending the night baking as many sugar cookies, chocolate chip biscuits, lemon cupcakes, and blueberry pies they could. The goal included selling the baked sweets that many foreigners miss so much from back home, along with a silent auction of goods donated by the expat community in the city, and a 50/50 raffle at RX Bar, the local foreigner hang out spot. An event page was created in Facebook and twenty one people in the town pledged their attendance.
These hard working ladies and their baked goods helped raise over one million won, just three hundred thousand won short of one year’s tuition. The turn-out was small in numbers if compared to an event in Seoul where many expats live, but Holly is more than satisfied with the generosity of her local community who helped surpass her goals for the fundraiser.
As for her hopes for Rose, Holly is again, more than satisfied.
“A lot of my dreams for her had already been fulfilled because she turned into a really assertive and strong woman,” says Holly. “She used to be terribly timid and couldn’t address issues at her school with her schedule. But now she is on top of things. She’s just bolder, it’s really amazing.”
