Upgrade from Intern to Staffer

Thanks to donors, FSI has been able to hire and expand hours and pay of our staffers, including North Korean refugee staffers. We do our best to make sure at least half of our paid staff members are North Korean refugees.

The good news: Our North Korean refugee interns working with us have improved their skills.
The bad news that is also good: We need to hire them as full-time paid staff so we can keep them.

* One North Korean refugee staffer has been with us part-time on-and-off for two years, mainly depending on when we could raise enough money to employ her. One of our hero donors recently told me that he would like to make more of a commitment to us. After several conversations, we settled on him making a monthly donation to increase the salary of a North Korean refugee staffer in the office.

What a difference it has made! The refugee has been with us for several years, first as a student, then as a staffer. At last, we can have Sharon in the office as our full-time accountant! It is a great moment for us, it feels like forever with her since she has been with us since early 2015. (I would love to name the Hero Donor, but he prefers to remain anonymous.)

* A second North Korean refugee staffer has been with us since late 2019. In this case, I was the Hero Donor, paying her salary out of pocket so she could get some on-the-job training. The co-presidents met last week and agreed that she was ready to become an intern on our payroll! I am so pleased to welcome Yena to our team officially!

* A South Korean team member has been with us for a few months, this is her first job out of college. We hired her part-time, and it turned out that she is great! Her initial internship is over, we have now offered her a full-time job. Dahye handles many office tasks, and also is assistant producer of my YouTube channel, Workable Words.

Thanks to the Forgotten Hero Donors, all of this is possible!

Eunkoo Lee reminded me that nothing is permanent, we need to continue raising money to support our growing staff.