VIBErations Episode 26 - Karing Frontiers

VIBErations podcast Ep 26. Karing Frontiers at VIBE Book & Music Shop in Mui Wo on Lantau Island in HK on 12th May 2021 Featuring interview with Angelica Cheng and Benny Berkenkotter

https://karingfrontiers.com

2 of 8 university students who have setup an NGO called Karing Frontiers. The purpose of ‘Karing Frontiers’ is to provide fundraising for refugee Karen students in Myanmar. VIBE has donated to this very worthy cause by donating 2 ‘goody bags’ for prizes in their mid-June raffle and sponsoring a student for 1 year via their website at www.karingfrontiers.com

This year, Karing Frontiers is aiming to raise HK$302,000 to empower 534 students and 60 teaching staff among five different post-secondary schools located in refugee camps. HK$560 is all it takes to sponsor one student for a whole academic year. Angelica Cheng is a rising junior at Tufts University, studying electrical engineering. A high school trip in 2018 to the Thai-Myanmar border would lead to her developing a passion for working with refugees and marginalized peoples.

In the following year, she began a high school project in the effort to secure access to higher education in the refugee camps on the Thai border. Eventually, the project would lead to the beginnings of Karing Frontiers, a registered NGO in Hong Kong. Now, when she’s not losing sleep to school, she works as the program director at Karing Frontiers.

Benny Berkenkotter is a rising junior environmental science major at the University of Vermont. He has been a part of Karing Frontiers since 2019, where he visited the Karen refugee camp and got to help with taking photos and videos of the students and teaching English. Now, he helps with coordinating fundraising strategies to keep the schools in the refugee camps afloat. His goal with Karing Frontiers is to give the Karen education system a stable and worry-free future so that the future generations of the Karen people also have a chance to become staples in modern-day society.