Adopted children often belong to a different ethnic group from their adoptive parents, creating challenges that organizations such as the Korean Adoptee Mentoring Program seek to address, said Chris Koh '06, a co-assistant coordinator of KAMP.
The group, now in its third year of operation, aims to give Korean adoptees a sense of their cultural identity by pairing them with Brown student mentors, said Jennifer Kim '04, also a co-assistant coordinator. As a Category III student group, KAMP receives full funding from the University.
About 25 student members from Brown, 80 percent of them with some Korean language skills, work one-on-one with mentees between the ages of 2 and 16, Kim said. Each week the mentor and mentee meet to talk, engage in activities and learn about Korean culture. "It's like a big-brother or big-sister relationship," she said.
The children enjoy eating Korean food or watching Korean movies, but Korean culture is not forced upon them if they aren't interested in learning about it, Kim said.
A number of older students are reluctant to come to meetings, Koh said. "They think, 'I don't need to know about Korean culture.'" According to Koh, younger students tend to be more receptive and interested in learning about their heritage.
"Many of these kids are growing up in a non-Korean, non-Asian world," said John Brougher '06, a KAMP mentor and himself a Korean adoptee. "Lots of them are having identity issues."
According to Koh, most students don't raise these issues readily. KAMP's organizers are planning to start another program within KAMP for older mentees who want to discuss issues of ethnic identity and grapple with the questions that come up as a minority student growing up with a family of a different ethnic background, Koh said.
Besides individual meetings between student mentors and their mentees, KAMP organizes culturally themed group events every month. There is usually an organized activity, such as demonstrations of tae kwon do or fan dancing, Kim said.
KAMP also recently took part in an intercollegiate conference involving several nearby schools, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Wellesley College. The conference featured lectures by professors, psychiatrists and Korean adoptees.
Koh said the event "spread awareness about KAMP-like programs" and received positive responses from participants.
According to Kim, it's not only mentees who benefit from KAMP's work. "I met 95 percent of my Korean friends here through KAMP," she said. The group's frequent meetings promote community building among students and help mentors explore issues that affect their lives as much as those of their mentees.
"They are going through this exploration with the kids," Kim said.
Koh said some people find adopting children of a different ethnicity or race inappropriate and think pairing Korean adoptees with parents of a different ethnic background causes adoptees to feel alienated from their culture. "Some people walk into KAMP with stereotypes that adopted children don't grow up in a normal way," he added. "Once you're engaged in the program you realize that it doesn't matter what race you are as long as you have a loving and caring family."
Kim said KAMP aims to provide its participants a sense of comfort and community in the "uniform" surroundings of Rhode Island, rather than simply knowledge about Korean culture. "It gives kids someone to identify with. My mentee is always sad to leave and asks to sleep over."
