Recently a group of Augsburg students staged two performances of The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler’s episodic play which began off-Broadway and has spawned V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. This year’s production raised more than $800 to benefit the House of Sharing, an organization in Seoul, South Korea that houses and cares for the surviving “comfort women,” young Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during WWII.
Augsburg senior Krystal Mattison is the granddaughter of a comfort woman. After spending time with this group of women during her year in Korea, she came back to Augsburg committed to raising awareness about this issue. Her own grandmother (halmoni) died when Mattison was five years old, but she learned of her grandmother’s story from her father. Continue reading “"Vagina Monologues" raises money and awareness”
Growing up, Nou Chang never imagined she would spend three months studying in another country. As a Hmong woman, studying abroad was not culturally accepted, nor was it financially feasible for her family. Despite these obstacles, Nou is “in a dream” in Seoul, South Korea where she is studying for a semester at Yonsei University on a Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE) program. She applied for and was awarded the Gilman International Scholarship Program, which offers grants for undergraduate students of limited financial means to pursue academic studies abroad.