NSU Psychology Student, Sharks Abroad Peer Advisor, and Women’s Rights Activist Completes Virtual Internship With South Korean NGO and Organizes a Web Conference to Educate the Community about the Lives of North Korean Women
Troy’nia Douglas, President of the Caribbean Student Association, Sharks Abroad Peer Advisor, and a senior in the Bachelor of Science in Psychology program at NSU’s College of Psychology with a minor in Business, completed a virtual internship through the NSU Sharks Abroad program with The Education Abroad Network (TEAN) for a prominent non-governmental organization known as Teaching North Korean Refugees (TNKR) located in Seoul, South Korea. The organization is known for empowering North Korean refugees and providing them with free English learning opportunities to open up their lives to more possibilities and choices outside of North Korea.
The web conference featured 3 guest speakers, the main one being Eunhee Park, a female North Korean defector and popular Korean YouTuber who learned English while at TNKR, alongside Co-Founders Casey Lartigue Jr. and Eunkoo Lee, who were Douglas’s internship supervisors. The web conference centered around the plethora of struggles that North Korean women face as they escape North Korea and try to start a new life in the South. The event offered a perspective of the strength, will, and determination that North Korean refugee women possess.
As a Sharks Abroad Peer Advisor, Douglas is now working to open doors to similar experiences for her fellow NSU students. Douglas organizes virtual international internship presentations and is available for individual advising sessions on Summer 2021 opportunities and beyond. Learn more at nova.edu/sharksabroad.
“To take action, one must first take the initiative to spread awareness and open up people’s minds to not just what is happening around you but to what is happening in other parts of the world,” Douglas said.