Calvin News

Calvin College will be the site for a fundraiser for North Korea on Saturday, February 19. The event is a "One-Day Café," Korean style. It will be held from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Calvin College snack shop (known as Johnny's). 
Calvin's Korean students (there are about 20) are working with the Michigan Suhbu church in Grand Rapids to organize the event. The theme for the event is "The bread of life to our people we love." Money raised will support a North Korean noodle factory. 
Calvin senior Jason Gang, a student who is coordinating the event, says the money will be sent to North Korea through the Methodist denomination which has already established lines of support into North Korea. Gang says things will be informal with people coming and going during the day. Calvin students and church youth group members will perform Korean pop songs and food, including such Korean staples as kim bab and jab che, will be available. Lots of Korean tea will also be on hand. 
Gang noted that "it is easy to forget the dying people in the world. It is important that (events like this) remind us of a land that needs our prayers and our support." 
The situation in North Korea remains bleak. It's a country where three of every 10 children under two suffer severe malnutrition and six of every 10 children under seven suffer from stunted growth. Food shortages and deteriorating health services brought widespread child malnutrition to the country in the mid-1990s. 
Although food availability remains scarce, improvement in the food situation since the peak of the crisis in 1996/97 is attributable to large inputs of food aid, better harvests as a result of double-cropping, increased use of fertilizers and pesticides and potato production. The health condition of children in nurseries and kindergartens, who were the prime beneficiaries of food aid and other targeted basic services, improved in 1999. Nevertheless, agencies continued to report the presence of large numbers of malnourished children. For more info call 554-4969.