Korean Community Unites In Spokane Area
Lee Allinger’s father was an American serviceman stationed in Korea when he met her mother, a young Korean woman. Allinger spent 10 years of her childhood attending Department of Defense Schools there.
“The defense schools were so diverse because the military base represented an intense melting pot of the American population. Race was just never an issue,” she says.
As a Spokane Valley mother, however, Allinger says that her 8-year-old son Zach learned about prejudice at his elementary school when a classmate refused to play with the outgoing third-grader simply because he was Korean.
So life experience makes Allinger particularly sensitive to the challenges facing minority youth. “I’m acutely aware of the difficulties involved in being bicultural,” she says. “Koreans come to America for a better life, but it can be very difficult for their children.”
Allinger is determined to expose her sons to Korean culture. She also wants to improve the lives of other Korean children by educating their families about public services that are available to them. All of these factors led Allinger to the Korean American Women’s Association of the Spokane Area (KAWASA).
As programming director for the group, Allinger works with other KAWASA officers to translate public health documents from English to Korean, organize monthly health seminars, teach citizenship classes for Korean seniors and plan a variety of cultural enrichment activities.
KAWASA also educates youth about the dangers of cigarette smoking through a puppet show they’ve put on at the YWCA.
A small grant from the Spokane County Community Service Department allows KAWASA to mail announcements about their activities to more than 500 people.
Allinger discovered the group last July through Spokane’s Korean Presbyterian Church, which she attends with her family.
KAWASA hopes to open a permanent Korean service center in the future. The women would also like to establish a 24-hour hotline and provide a Korean translator at Spokane’s first indigent pharmacy, which health care professionals are currently planning.
If you would like to be a KAWASA volunteer, or to get more information about their activities, call 891-0279.
Created in support of the Spokane County Health Improvement Partnership (HIP), Discoveries highlights people working to improve community health and wellbeing. If you have a discovery that deserves recognition, call Elana Ashanti Jefferson at 459-5419. To get involved with HIP, call 482-2557.
, DataTimes