Remember the Moments of Summer School

20-year history of the Seoul YWCA Summer School for Korean Adoptees in Europe

The World Fellowship Department has published and opened a publication ceremony on September 24 at 2 p.m. about the foreign adoptee summer school that has been organized for 17 years starting in 1990.

The start of the first domestic adoptee program

There was no place that had any program on adoptees in 1990 until Seoul YWCA started its summer school program. When adoptees were sent overseas, there was no other follow-up management. After Seoul Y started this adoptee program, it has started to work on other special adoptee agency’s program of visiting home countries. This raised awareness and lots of places started to have adoptee programs which caused a decline of participants. Therefore, Seoul Y had to unfortunately stop its program in 2007.

In 2010, to celebrate the 20^th anniversary of Summer School, a Homecoming Day inviting back the adoptees who participated in Summer School was proposed. It was started on February by the World Fellowship committee and subcommittee. 500 invites were prepared and personally sent out but there wasn’t many participants for many addresses and contacting phone numbers had changed. Therefore starting in 2011, the 20 year anniversary of summer school was decided to be recorded which took 2 years until it was published.

Back to the moment

At the publication ceremony, there were 50 participants. Adoptee participants at that time, college community service participants, instructors, past and current world fellowship committee members, and other Seoul Y members were present. Ji Bok Im world fellowship committee member, who was the host, introduced all guests. President Cha Gwi Suk presented a plague of appreciation to Dr. Han Tae Dong, a sponsor and counselor, and to honorary director Hong Geun Pyo. A very touching speech was given by Lee Wong Hee, world fellowship department member, describing the progress that took this booklet to be published. Lastly, through the short clip, I felt the strong urge to go back in time to when we presented each adoptee a chance to visit their home country.