Hey everyone!
This past Christmas (that’s right! just about a month ago!), some of RUN Korea’s staff went and visited our kids and local staff at RUN Children’s Home.
This precious bond between two seemingly unlikely life companions--
Well folks, it all began with a story of a somewhat typical volunteer experience of a high school student. Back in 2012, Joon visited Uganda and witnessed an entirely different world from what he had known. Through the unpaved roads, the foreign taste of dust, anxiously maneuvering through the bustling (and often staring) crowd that flowed and ebbed without a moment’s hesitation through dozens of boda bodas (motorcycles that serve as cabs), he found an establishment that was able to provide some of the poorest children in the slums outside the capital, Kampala.
There, with the help of those who were willing to care and to see beyond their own lives, nearly twenty kids were eating rice, pocho, and beans, going to school, but most importantly, beginning to believe in a word that was so foreign to them before: a future.
But in 2014, when the unsustainable operations of the original establishment, called Ethical Encounters, ended up failing and the initiative was bankrupt, the leader of the establishment left the children behind. Joon, who was only finishing his freshman year in college, decided (in all honestly, quite naively, stupidly, but certainly with a big heart) that it was time to step up to the challenge. He didn’t know what it meant to be a non-profit, he didn’t know the ABCs of running anything. But what he had was a group of outstanding peers at Harvard and a drive to better the lives of those whom he had met. And from there, Raise Uganda Now (RUN) was founded
And with many uphill battles with pro-bono lawyers, we were able to establish ourselves as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, recognized by the IRS.
The story continues...