A fundraiser to help southern African students

By Ines Min

Namibia, the world’s second least-densely populated country after Mongolia, may seem like a distant land to many. For one native English teacher in Seoul, it’s a second home.

A fundraiser to help southern African high school students is being held at 8 p.m., Dec. 24 at Roofers in Itaewon. The event is a launch ceremony to help establish a new charity, which aims to improve the educational environment of a small village in Namibia, in southern Africa.

Founder Jeremy Polio, 32, is a former Peace Corps. volunteer who spent two years in Gosen teaching English. A return visit to the village earlier this year, and steady communication with his friends and former students, led to his realization that something needed to be done to help.

``It’s still a poor community and I spent two of my better years there. I still think a lot about it,’’ Polio said in an interview last week in southern Seoul. ``But there’s not a lot that I can do that’s tangible,’’ he said, considering some of the dire circumstances the community members face, including the wide reach of HIV/AIDS. In terms of education, however, he felt there was something to be done. ``I can promote education and put a focus on it.’’

After receiving emails to fiscal help from former students, the idea to create Gosen Community Effort (GCE) came naturally to Polio, who is originally from Detroit, Mich.

While schooling is considered desirable (``Kind of like Korean school, there’s a lot of pressure on the kids’’), the ability to send students to the senior secondary level of high school is difficult. A drop in government funding sees the average tuition of $10-$20 a year it costs to send younger students to school, jump to within the $100-$250 range for their final two years.

``Admission to college or university is much more competitive than admission to grades 11 and 12, so even if students manage to barely pass high school they may not be allowed the opportunity for further matriculation,’’ according to GCE’s website.

If children fail or drop out of school, their other option is to farm, Polio said. But as agriculture is based on a tenant system, farmers can be pushed out, forced to move to the city and then live as squatters. Many families will have one member working in a larger town to send remittances home but it’s not ``your’’ money, he explained ― it’s the entire family’s.

With the help of GCE, students will know there is a resource to support them, if they achieve high enough scores to enter into the final stages of their education.

During Polio’s last visit to Gosen in February, he promised his former school that he’d send up to two students to their last years in high school. But when the results came back from their mock exams in August, the American expat received news that not just two, but six students passed with the required grade ― and another six were only a point or two shy of the mark.

``What are you supposed to tell those other four, five or six who get the score?’’ And then: ``Why not the kids before them, or after?’’

So Polio hopes to raise enough at the organization’s first fundraiser to send as many kids as possible onto the 11th grade ... a deadline that needs to be reached by the end of December. In the past, the native English teacher has paid for students out of his own pocket ― determined to see them continue their education and gain the opportunities open to them afterward.

For Polio, it’s not just a desire to help; it’s one of the things he’s learned in the tiny village where people share stories about their lives as a pastime. ``Their entertainment is to be friends.’’

The fundraiser kicks off Christmas Eve with plenty of entertainment. Drink specials, a raffle and a date auction will be hosted, accompanied by local DJs and other acts. Suggest donation 5,000 won. For more information, visit www.gosena.org or email info@gosena.org.