Janice Jang
Stuyvesant High School
There is an old adage, our futures depend on our children; our children are ultimately our futures. Nowadays I recognize the vital connection between Korean American success and that maxim. Despite our many achievements and obstacles we have overcome, we can still improve our living statuses by focusing on the adolescents and young adults of today, soon to be the leaders of tomorrow.
To elevate our Korean community in America, we must first see how some teenagers spend their time: many are in the streets, cutting classes, illegally drinking, smoking, clubbing, and even selling their bodies for easy money. Of course not all young Korean Americans are in such situations but much too many belong to that group of students. It may be unbelievable to parents, but this is the naked truth we can witness wherever we go.
Yet, have hope by helping these adolescents, this situation can be altered. The root of the problem stems from neglect. It is an ugly word and has an even uglier effect upon our burgeoning Korean American community. In the case of our young adults for example, many parents neglect to stay home long enough to ask their children about their days. They fail to attend Parent Teachers Association meetings and Parent-Teacher Conferences. Parents do not offer the time to give emotional support and encouragement or even understand their children. Left uncared for, these children do not have anyone to turn to when they most need a guiding figure to shape their impressionable minds. Faced with neglect, they feel dejected; harboring such negative stigma, they turn to inappropriate activities such as those aforementioned.
I fully understand that some households just have no other choice but to work all day long, not from useless greed, but from necessity. Therefore, I am not asking Korean parents to quit work and care for their children. I am not asking parents to devote all their free time to their children because I know how some Korean American households barely get by from paying their bills and putting food on their tables. Recent immigrants, who are on shaky and alien grounds, especially suffer from financial constraints. These are all valid reasons to be busy but not enough, never enough, to neglect children.
Therefore, I propose a solution to this dilemma: community centers just for Korean Americans with programs geared toward students and their parents. These community centers would be free for all eligible students and parents. Here, they can spend time together, whether they attend family therapy sessions or play tennis. Workshops, meetings, and seminars can be held with prominent speakers advising audiences of topics ranging from colleges and possible careers to breaking news currently faced by Korean Americans. Outings can be arranged for groups to go hiking or ice-skating. Even if members visited once a week, that would still be better than our neglected children roaming the streets. Regardless of parents busy schedules, everyone can spare some time get to know his or her child better.
At other times, students can go after school and on weekends with friends to learn in a fun and exciting way instead of hanging out, smoking, or drinking.
Being offered an alternative outlet, students will turn their attention to a healthy and worthwhile experience.
Each of the centers will be a place of comfort for teenagers with pent up stress. My goal is that students will find all the resources they need here. If they have a problem they can뭪 talk about with their parents, they will always find a listening ear somewhere. If they want to practice dialogues in French for an upcoming exam, they will find speaking partners here. And if a girl found out that she was pregnant, she will find out about abortion centers or counselors here. Whatever the issue, everyone will find solutions in these community centers. Nobody who enters this place will be left uncared for.
To encourage a growth of friendship and trustworthy relationships among members, we should develop a Big Sibs organization (similar to the one in Stuyvesant High School). As students who have more experience and foresight (but also are not too out of the age range), Big Sibs can relate and understand troubled adolescents. Each one will act as a family relative, serving as one more person that a student can depend on.
However, it is also necessary to make members continue to attend these programs for a long-period of time. To do that, we can create a program that also develops responsibility: raising a pet or caring for a plant. Teens can adopt abandoned pets (such as bunnies, snails, or garden snakes) at shelters and bring them to the community center where they would have to build cages or houses and feed the pets everyday. If they can뭪 make it one day, they can ask their friends to care for them. Students can have fun, learn to respect animals, and become more responsible about duties they are in charge of by the simple act of raising a living organism.
Not only a place of interaction, these Korean American community centers will aim towards bonding parents with their children while instilling morality and ethics into carefree and indifferent teenagers. Maybe they never learned how seriously doing drugs, smoking, and drinking can affect their bodies. Or if they did, maybe they뭭e been doing those things to grab attention from their parents. But here, students will learn to use their bodies and minds in a proactive and progressive way. By providing them with such activities and showing that they are watched and cared for, students can change their lifestyles 180 degrees. Once this idea is erected into something real, I believe that these community centers can help students become better people who will be capable of helping our society in the future to come.
Realizing this potential calls not only for words but also for action. Funding for this project is the first step. We would work on collecting donations and acquiring sponsors from major companies. We can also reach charities to transform this dream into a building of activities. While we form connections and partnerships with other organizations, we can then look for volunteers, both adults and students, who can teach certain subjects or skills. Students would earn service credit while helping their peers. After the initial steps, we should publicize the centers to schools, libraries, hospitals, churches, friends, and family so students can be reached and encouraged to join. An active campaign of internet advertising, flyers, brochures, pamphlets, radio advertising, and television interviews should reach thousands of Korean Americans all over the country.
As we address the young, we must also address the situation of the elderly, a group of citizens who are equally neglected and left alone with a bleak and empty future. While I have been volunteering at a local nursing home and living with my own grandmother, I realized that they feel they are a burden onto their children. Many are cast away into nursing homes, forgotten by their own children. Some of them, only 70 years old, have been cared for by strangers for more than ten years when they are perfectly capable of all motor skills. Abandoned and neglected, they feel betrayed for being treated like crazy individuals who need to be isolated from the rest of society. It is unfair that society deems them unneeded and unwanted when many senior citizens can still function in this world. We must help to make these lonely people feel like they belong.
More specifically, our senior citizens suffer from several disadvantages. Not only are they bounded by physical and mental deterioration common to all of the elderly, but they also suffer from language and cultural barriers. Because of these barriers, many of our Korean seniors suffer internally, afraid to voice their discomfort and fear. Trapped inside, they face a tragically spiraling effect of increased emotional depression eventually and inevitably leading to increased degeneration. As important as it is to address our young and growing Korean Americans, it is just as important to be wary of the other neglected members of our community.
I propose that we create programs that run contests just for the senior citizens. These competitions may include poetry, art, pottery, gardening, singing, and clothes-making. Like scholarships, piano competitions, and essay contests, winners should get some sort of a reward. Many grandfathers and grandmothers will have opportunities to engage in long-term projects for contests. At least with such goals, they will feel a purpose in living and a reason for living.
These programs can be run by newspaper companies, restaurants, supermarkets or anywhere else that has the money and will to help. Not only will older generations feel more purposeful, but they will also be less lonely since they can make friends during these affairs: they can meet people who are more like them and talk about things that relate to them. These activities will stimulate their minds and help them become more outgoing and talkative about a great array of topics.
In addition, motivating the elderly to do things that they are skilled in will allow them to believe that they are still capable of many things. They will become more active, at the same time making them healthier in mind, body, and spirit. Continuing to write, garden, cook, knit, and sing will prolong their lives in a more natural way instead of taking countless pills to stop pain in their joints, induce painless digestion, prevent Alzheimer뭩 disease, and lower blood pressure - signs of aging that can all be prevented or delayed by other means.
Through hard work and countless hours of effort put into these projects, I plan to target and reach those neglected teens and elderly who believe that aid is not on the way. I believe that these community centers will be bubbling with students willing to learn and teach what they can to help each other become better people, not only for themselves but also for their futures. I believe in the livelihood of our grandparents. We, as a community, are the only ones with this power to control our lives and futures. We must take action, not spend all our time reveling in our successes and being satisfied. When it comes to our community, there should never be such a thing as enough.
I am currently fifteen years old and will be entering tenth grade at Stuyvesant High School. I was placed 5th among New York City 26,000 participants in the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test with a score of 702. I am maintaining a cumulative average of over a 96%. Last year, I was accepted into the Horace Mann School, Trinity School, and Townsend Harris.
I have attended the Johns Hopkins University CTY program in 7th grade and in 8th grade. This summer, I participated in the mathematics division of the CCNY Summer Scholars Program. I have also continued my community services at a local YWCA (namely, Youthology) and at the Little Neck Nursing Home.
I enjoy playing the piano (8 years) and the violin (7 years). I am involved in two orchestras (one in school and another outside COS). I am also in my school math team and newspaper (The Spectator). I enjoy swimming, reading, writing, and collecting foreign money.
I hope to become a valuable member of society, one who will be needed and can help our community in some way.