Q1. Please briefly introduce yourself!
Hello, I am Lee Ye-eun. At school I study French language education and diplomacy, and outside school I am a university student learning how to cook good home meals for myself. There is so much to learn in the world that I sometimes think I may spend my whole life only learning.
Q2. Please tell us why you applied to MAP.
I was actually a student at a teachers’ college who liked meeting children in classrooms and kept looking for educational volunteering. Then, after I happened to join an educational volunteering program for refugee children in the Maesol area, the lives of refugees gradually began to come into my view. While looking for more that I could do, I found MAP in a notice for a school human rights organization partnership program, and I applied without hesitation. I think that from now on I will probably keep living a life that looks to the lives and education of excluded people in our world, such as refugees.
Q3. When do you feel most like yourself?
When I come second, and when I serve as deputy leader. In Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger there is the expression ‘pur mais sans éclat’, which describes a sky that is not dazzling but clear. I think I want to be a person like that sky. Even if I am not dazzling or showy, I want to be a person who is bright and clear, and who leaves a comfortable, lingering impression. I prefer a second place that is cheered on to a dazzling first place, and a friendly deputy leader standing behind to a team leader standing at the very front.
Q4. There are moments when I think I am cool, whether or not others recognize it. When in your life were you at your coolest?
Not long ago I learned to ride a bike! I had put it off until now because I was afraid of flailing around with my long legs while little children whizzed by and stared curiously, but when I actually tried, it was nothing. I think starting something and taking on a challenge is always cool. Both the bike and MAP are challenges I am very proud of.
Q5. Finally, what kind of ‘change’ do you want to bring about through your work at MAP?
Over a period of about half a year, my volunteering cannot change the world right away, but I would like to bring about a change that at least moves the thinking of a few people. Both the PR work and Displaced, which I am in charge of, are about carrying MAP’s voice and steps to more people. I believe that if more people share this awareness of the problem, think about a society without exclusion, and those thoughts accumulate one by one, the world will change. So at MAP I want to add my strength to changing more people’s thinking and erasing the world’s prejudice and hatred.
