High school sophomore Allen Geronimo checked his email every hour for nearly three weeks, hoping for a message from his South Korean pen pal who was a passenger on the Sewol ferry that sunk last month.
“Half of me said that he probably wouldn’t make it, because he couldn’t swim. The other half of me thought that he was okay and that I would be able to talk to him soon,” Geronimo said. He recently learned his friend survived the sinking without injury.
To help comfort others who were affected by the Sewol ferry tragedy, Geronimo used the same instrument he had relied on to reach out to his friend – he wrote a letter.
Geronimo wrote his letter through Dear Danwon, a project founded by UCLA students Vivian Nguyen and Felicia Vo that collects letters to be hand-delivered to Danwon High School. Many of the people who died when the ferry sunk en route to Jeju Island from Incheon, South Korea were from Danwon High School in Ansan, South Korea.
Nguyen, a first-year biology student, founded the project with her friend Vo, a third-year biology student, about two weeks after the sinking of the Sewol ferry, which reportedly sank because it had routinely exceeded its cargo limit.
The death toll from the ferry incident is still rising, with 263 passengers dead and 39 missing.
Geronimo is one of more than a hundred people from various places around the globe who have contributed to Nguyen’s letter project, which was mainly publicized through social media. Submissions have come from countries like Panama, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand and Germany. Participants can mail, scan or email their letters.
The two friends said they wanted to bring a comforting message of hope to the people affected by the event.
“Words are one way we connect to people. I thought this letter project would be good for people who don’t have the money to donate,” Vo said. “Something as simple as a few words of encouragement from all around the world can be helpful.”
The project aims to draw its power from its simplicity.
“It’s hard to reach people across the globe, but (they) provided an easy outlet to touch their hearts,” said Jazzie Collins, a first-year psychobiology student who wrote a letter through the project.
Nguyen and Vo got the idea for the letter writing project from a mutual friend, who also started a letter campaign at her high school for Danwon students. They decided to use a similar model but widened its accessibility nationally and internationally.
The project has far surpassed the pair’s initial expectations, Nguyen said. Their website has reached more than two thousand views.
Many of the letters offer condolences and encouragement to those in Danwon who have been affected by the tragedy.
When Geronimo wrote his letter he had not yet learned that his pen pal had survived.
“I decided to write that letter and hoped that people could keep going forward,” Geronimo said.
The two plan to meet each other in real life after Geronimo graduates from high school, furthering the friendship they began through letters.
The first batch of Dear Danwon letters were mailed to Danwon High School on Sunday. The project is still collecting letters to be sent as part of the second batch of letters.
“We’re in a time and age of technology where our lives are so fast-paced,” Nguyen said. “Sometimes, a handwritten letter means the world to someone.”