Over 300 students sent abroad for overseas volunteer work, foreign expositions, etc. with school funding during the winter break
YU offering huge support to increase opportunities for global experiences
[December 27, 2019]
<38th Overseas Volunteer Corps Launching Ceremony (Dec 20, 2019)>
YU students will be sent all around the world with the start of the new year in 2020 to enhance their global capacities. During this winter break, 300 YU students will be sent abroad for various school-funded programs.
The ‘Overseas Volunteer Corps’ is one of the representative overseas dispatch programs of YU. Since 2001, a total of approximately 2,750 students took part in 37 sessions of the Overseas Volunteer Corps. In this year’s winter break, 54 students in the 38th Overseas Volunteer Corps will do volunteer work in Laos, Vietnam and Thailand. They held their launching ceremony at the YU College of Education auditorium at 3 p.m. on the 20th and will depart for their respective countries on January 5 and engage in volunteer work for two weeks.
The volunteers will take part in volunteer work including educational activities such as art and P.E. at local elementary schools and environmental improvement such as painting wall murals. In particular, the volunteers are planning to engage in cultural exchange by teaching students Korean and how to make traditional masks.
Kim Jong-ha (21, Department of Commerce and Trade, junior), the team leader for the 38th Volunteer Corps to Vietnam, said, “I applied to the overseas volunteer corps because I wanted to gain different overseas experiences and take part in meaningful activities while in college. We divided our roles into science, art, hygiene and cultural exchange and held several meanings to prepare for this carefully.” He added, “It is a short period of just two weeks, but we will do our best to help the local students and by doing so, uplift the status of Korea and our school.”
The overseas exposition program, which was introduced by YU for the first time last summer break, is also gaining a lot of interest by students. In this program, students visit overseas expositions, etc. to enhance their competence in their majors and to gain a global mindset. This is a program that also improves start-up and employment capacities by investigating start-up items abroad. This winter break, a total of 54 students in 22 teams will be sent to the US, Europe, Singapore and Japan.
<YU Volunteer Corps at work>
The most popular program among students from the various overseas dispatch programs supported by YU is ‘Window To the World’. ‘Window To the World’ is a program where students organize teams and set their own themes to go off on a backpacking trip abroad. Selected students are given round-trip airfares by the school. Since 2002, a total of about 2,890 students visited different parts of the world, and this winter break, 120 students will make teams of 2 or 3 to travel to different parts of the world including Europe, Australia and China.
'OPP' (Outbound Pilot Program) is another proud school-funded overseas dispatch program of YU. This is a short-term language training program for students who are interested in studying abroad or becoming an exchange student at an overseas sister school. A total of 1,880 students participated in the OPP since its beginning in 2009 and this winter break, 58 students will be dispatched to Malaysia for four weeks through the OPP to improve their language skills.
YU President Sur Gil-soo said, “I hope that students will use their break to improve their internationalization capacities and gain various experiences. YU will continue to provide positive support by coming up with various overseas dispatch programs so that more students will be able to step out into the bigger world and improve their global leadership.”
